


Little Boy Lost

by satanfish (mjindra9)



Series: Songs of Innocence and Experience [1]
Category: Spooks | MI-5
Genre: F/M, References to Suicide, also basically everyone from section d is there, also for those that need the warnings, also wow i suck at summaries, and all that stuff, and tags, as well as some ocs, but for the most part the fic focuses on lucas and ros so i figure i'll only tag them, but it's sort of slow burn in a not really kind of way, but there's nothing in detail, but you know what we're gonna roll with this, eventually there will be lucas/ros, if not for the smut this fic would be rated t, more dealing with the fallout of those particular themes, smut will be in its own chapters and appropriately noted though!, there is also some references to rape, there will also be smut eventually, there'll also be canon-typical violence
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-01-29
Updated: 2019-02-27
Packaged: 2019-03-10 21:41:10
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 29
Words: 66,205
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13510317
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mjindra9/pseuds/satanfish
Summary: A Lucas-centric rewrite of series 7. With bonus Ros because, in this house, we love and protect Ros Myers (not that she needs protecting).





	1. Chapter 1

_Father, father, where are you going_  
_O, do not walk so fast._  
_Speak father, speak to your little boy_  
_Or else I shall be lost,_  
_The night was dark no father was there_  
_The child was wet with dew._  
_The mire was deep, & the child did weep_  
_And away the vapour flew._

– William Blake

Lucas sipped at his coffee, blue-grey eyes darting from table to table. This particular coffee shop had always been a favourite of Lucas’ before Russia and, while he was pleased to see that it was receiving more customers, he was also on edge about the number of people. In some ways, there was safety in numbers. It was harder to get jumped in an environment where there were plenty of witnesses. But, Lucas also knew that it was easier to sneak up on someone in a crowd. He had used a crowd to his advantage many times in the past and he had no doubt he would do so again. And he knew that anyone with… less than savoury intentions towards him could _also_ make use of the crowd to sneak up on him.

 _I’ll drive myself mental if I look for enemies in every face I see_ , Lucas thought. Still, he took the time to thoroughly study everyone in the little coffee shop, assessing the potential threat level for each person. While he rather doubted the hipsters sitting two tables down from him were going to spring up and try to stab him any time soon, he’d rather not be taken by surprise again. So he watched and assessed each potential threat, not moving on to the next person until he was certain he had a feel for what he could expect from the last.

Lucas could explain the hyper vigilance. He understood that he was being irrational. Hell, he rather doubted that the FSB would swoop in and bundle him off to Russia when, ostensibly, as far as they were aware, he was working for them. If Kachimov suspected duplicity when they spoke earlier, he hadn't said as much. He hadn't provided any information about Lucas' new handler, but Lucas supposed that was to be expected rather than any sign of suspicion. Kachimov never had been particularly forthcoming when it came to his plans. Still, Lucas figured it couldn’t hurt to hone his skills, especially after being out of the game for eight years. Knock off the rust, so to speak, especially when he had to meet with Harry in a few hours. His entire plan was contingent on Harry _not_ throwing him into a cell, which meant he had to tread cautiously.

Of course, there was the ulterior motive for hyper vigilance, one that was directly related to the hollow feeling in his stomach. Seeing Vyeta with a child…. He knew he shouldn’t have been surprised. Of course she would have moved on. It had been eight years since he had been home. It was only natural that she had moved on, that she found someone who could give her what she wanted, and who was _there_. Still, seeing her… seeing the _proof_ that she had moved on…. It was bittersweet, recalling Harry telling him that Vyeta was well and happy. It had been silly of him to think that she would wait for him. Vyeta had moved on, evidently. He should too, and that meant proving his worth to Harry so that he could get access to the Grid again.

He rubbed his eyes, feeling the little sleep he had gotten last night. Lucas wasn’t sure he could handle another night in the safe house. Fortunately, Malcolm had called him earlier this morning to tell him that the Service had gotten him accommodations in Battersea. Lucas was familiar enough with the area. It was a good neighbourhood, had a nice park nearby, and decent enough shopping. There were a lot worse areas he could have ended up. And, best of all, it meant he wouldn’t have to spend another night in the safe house. _Thank God for small mercies_.

It was as Lucas was distracting himself from thoughts of Vyeta by once again thoroughly examining the occupants of the coffee shop that he noticed the reason he was currently sitting at a table instead of working on implementing his plan to earn Harry’s trust and get back on the Grid. Tom Quinn looked… surprisingly good after eight years, Lucas thought. Time had no doubt been kinder to Tom than it had to Lucas, if the wedding band on Tom’s left hand was anything to go by. Still, Lucas wasn’t a fool. He knew that there was more to the story about Tom’s… early retirement. It surprised Lucas all the same to hear that Tom was no longer with MI-5. When they were younger, both of them lived and breathed work. _And now he is living the married life away from MI-5_.

“You look chipper,” Tom Quinn said as he took a seat opposite Lucas.

Lucas smiled thinly. “Just got back from holiday.”

Tom snorted, an eloquent commentary on Lucas’ description of prison. “It’s good to see you, Lucas.”

“Yeah,” Lucas said, putting his cup down. “You look good.”

Tom shrugged. “Tried out your job. Didn’t work out. Got married and then formed a new private security firm with Christine. If you’re looking for work, we could always use good employees,” he said carefully.

It was Lucas’ turn to shrug. He had never imagined what he’d do when he got back home. Every day in prison, he had always just… hoped he would simply _get_ to come home in something other than a body bag. On the rare occasion that he allowed himself to feel that small, glimmer of hope that maybe one day he’d get to go home, he’d always seen himself returning to the Grid, to MI-5. _To Vyeta_. But she was gone. MI-5 didn’t trust him. He didn’t know what to do with himself, beyond trying to prove to Harry that he hadn’t broken in prison. _I stayed loyal. And look what it got me_ , he thought bitterly.

“Sorry, mate,” Lucas said. “But Malcolm just went through the trouble of getting me a flat. He’d be upset with me if I up and left work. And Christine… As in the Christine I know or a different Christine?”

Tom coughed and looked away. “The one you know.”

Lucas lifted an eyebrow. While he wasn’t exactly surprised to hear that Tom was married now, last he knew, Tom was less than receptive to Christine. Granted, that was largely because of her position in the CIA. Lucas fondly remembered deliberately sending Tom to deal with Christine, entirely because Lucas didn’t care for dealing with the CIA. Besides, it had irked Christine every time Lucas had sent Tom instead of going to the meet himself. They both knew that Tom didn’t have the authorization to make any deals with Christine. Tom was the middleman and they all knew it and it irritated Christine that Lucas kept doing it, which suited him just fine. Let her be annoyed with him and possibly slip up. Let her call him and complain for ten minutes that he had, once again, bailed on the meet and sent Tom in his stead.

Still, Lucas was happy for Tom. He deserved some happiness. Christine had been a formidable CIA liaison, probably one of the better ones Lucas had encountered, and she had been tenacious when she thought MI-5 was holding out on her. It was one of the things he had hated about her, but also admired. Tom and Christine, though… _Who would have thought?_ “Congratulations. Welcome to life with the ball and chain,” he said, smiling bitterly.

Tom hesitated for a moment. “Have you seen her?”

Lucas didn’t need to be a mind reader to know who Tom was referring to. He stared hard at his coffee before carefully saying, “Yeah.”

“And?”

He forced himself to shrug, to act like his world hadn’t shattered seeing Vyeta with a child. “If she’s happy, I’m happy for her.”

“She gave me your stuff to store,” Tom said. “If you want it. Harry find you a place yet?”

 _Well, at least she didn’t toss it_. If he had been her, he wasn’t so sure he wouldn’t have tossed it. Lucas hadn’t exactly left for Moscow on good terms with her and, really, how could he blame her? She only knew he was missing a lot of dinners and breaking a lot of promises. He would have been surprised if she _hadn’t_ thought he was having an affair. He had promised they would talk when he got back and that he’d call when he got to Moscow. At least he had kept one of those promises. Still, it was a relief to know that at least Vyeta had given his stuff to Tom. “Yeah, in Battersea.”

“Need help moving in?”

“Just getting my stuff there,” Lucas said. He’d rather do his own unpacking, largely because he didn’t particularly want anyone to see him be disappointed at what Vyeta had chosen to keep and what she had chosen to give to Tom.

Tom studied Lucas’ face for a long moment before saying, “All right. If you need anything….”

“I’ll be sure to call,” Lucas promised.

Tom nodded and gave an order to the waitress that had sauntered over. Neither of them said anything while they waited for Tom’s coffee to arrive. Lucas looked over the crowd once again. The hipsters were still doing whatever it was hipsters do these days. Two teenage girls had claimed a spot in the corner. Every now and then, Lucas could hear the peal of laughter from them. All around him, sounds of life echoed, as if nothing had changed for anyone. It was… reassuring, in a way, Lucas supposed. The world may have turned on its head for him, but it continued to turn for everyone else. _Maybe, one day, it’ll turn for me too_.

The waitress brought Tom’s coffee over and asked Lucas if he wanted another coffee, which he accepted. They continued to sit in silence as she left to make Lucas’ coffee. That was the nice thing about Tom, Lucas thought. They didn’t have to talk to take comfort in each other’s presence. Tom had joined MI-5 a year after Lucas and the two had become inseparable shortly thereafter. In many ways, Tom eased the pang of loss Lucas felt every time he had walked onto the Grid. He had given up his old life when he joined MI-5. Tom had been the first to tacitly suggest that maybe he could make a new life with MI-5. Lucas and Tom had bonded over being new and a certain… proclivity for reckless antics that ignored the conventional rules. Certainly, there were times that they could talk for hours. More times than not, though, they both had been content with companionable silence. _At least some things never change_.

The waitress came back with Lucas’ coffee. When she left again, Tom said, “What are your plans?”

“For today?” Lucas asked. He leaned back in his chair. “Move in. Unpack.”

“You know they’ll bug your flat,” Tom said.

Lucas smile was brittle. He knew. When Malcolm had told him that they found a place in Battersea, he had said that Lucas wouldn’t be able to move in until after midday. Lucas was almost certain that Malcolm hadn’t intended to tell him, without telling him outright, that MI-5 needed the morning to get some bugs in the walls before Lucas moved in. He had a feeling that, at some point in the next week or so, he’d be undoubtedly called out to meet with Harry or would have to go do errands where he would undoubtedly be held up by an old friend or colleague and MI-5 would come in and finish planting bugs when there was furniture in the flat.

“Counting on it,” Lucas said, shrugging. And he was. Harry would never believe Lucas if he said that he was loyal to MI-5. Hell, Lucas had told him in the car that he had agreed to spy for Kachimov so that he could come home. Whether Harry had believed him or not… Lucas wasn’t sure. He hoped Harry didn’t. _If Harry **had** believed me, I’d be sitting in a cell right now, not sipping coffee_. Still, the bugs were a means to prove Lucas wasn’t up to anything suspicious. They would show him acting normal, not making any phone calls to the FSB or meeting strange Russians. _And, of course, they’ll show Harry I’m not sleeping_. Lucas wasn’t so sure he liked that part, but he couldn’t see a way around it without telling Harry he knew about the bugs and wanted them gone, which would only further Harry’s suspicion of Lucas.

Tom nodded. “If you want the flat cleaned….”

The corner of Lucas’ mouth twitched upwards. “Nah,” he said. “Thanks, though.”

Tom studied Lucas. Lucas tensed under the scrutiny. He folded his hands in his lap and stared hard at the table, trying to ignore the discomforting feeling of being studied. “This wouldn’t have anything to do with Polecat, would it?” Tom asked, finally breaking the silence.

Lucas flinched. He knew that it wasn’t much of a stretch. How could it be? Tom had been just as good as Lucas back in the day, and he had been on the London side of the operation when Lucas had been captured in Moscow. It wasn’t that far of a stretch for any spook worth his or her salt to think Lucas wanted the bugs in place _because_ of Polecat and that he wanted to use the bugs to prove his loyalty to Harry _after_ Polecat. An ugly thought taunted Lucas, that he just wanted the bugs in place to make sure he didn’t get snatched out of his damn flat again, and he had to close his eyes for a second and take a few steadying deep breaths to force the memories back.

When Lucas didn’t answer, Tom sighed and took a deep drink from his coffee. When he put the mug down, he said, “You planning on looking into it?”

“I don’t have access to any of the files,” Lucas said, cautiously. Which was true. He didn’t. But he could remember the day, crystal clear, that he had been captured. And, no matter how distressing it was for him to remember it, he planned to go over the day until he could figure out _something_ that would give him some kind of hint as to what led to his capture. Had it been him being sloppy? Was Kachimov right and someone in MI-5 burnt him? _Was it Harry?_ Lucas ruthlessly shoved that thought back. He knew it wasn’t Harry. It couldn’t have been. _Could it?_ The ugly voice, the one that kept him company more weeks than not in prison, whispered that all the evidence thus far suggested it very well could have been Harry.

“I’ll look into it for you,” Tom offered, oblivious to Lucas’ internal struggle. “We don’t have the resources Harry has, but I might be able to kick some trees and see what falls out.”

“Thanks,” Lucas said.

“They tell you anything?” Tom asked.

It didn’t take a whole lot of mental gymnastics for Lucas to figure out who Tom was referring to. _Of course they bloody well did_. The FSB had told him, multiple times in fact, that someone had betrayed him to the FSB. When Lucas hadn’t reacted, the FSB tried a new angle and had said that Harry wasn’t in much of a hurry to get him back. They had let Lucas’ imagination do the rest of the work. He didn’t _want_ to believe that Harry had betrayed him… but he couldn’t deny that they were right, that Harry sure as hell hadn’t tried too hard to get Lucas back.

Lucas took another sip of his coffee, letting the heat of it warm his suddenly chilled body. “Nothing substantial,” Lucas said finally. “Someone blew me.”

Tom blinked, and Lucas knew that he was as surprised about the news as Lucas had been when the FSB had told him. “They didn’t say who?”

"No,” Lucas lied. Some part of him was surprised at how _easy_ it was to lie to Tom. They’d been best mates since Tom joined MI-5. Hell, Tom had been Lucas’ best man when he was married. They had each other’s backs in any given operation. And now, Lucas found himself lying to Tom because he wasn’t sure he could trust him. He took another sip of coffee to rid the sudden, bitter taste in his mouth.

“Who do you think it was?” Tom asked.

Lucas frowned at his coffee cup. During some of his long periods of solitary confinement, he had chewed over who might have been responsible for his capture. He didn’t want to think it was anyone in Section D, but the fact remained that it had been an in-house operation. Someone from his section, someone he had thought he could trust, had spoken to the Russians and had told them he was in Moscow. They had told the FSB where to find Lucas, what safe house he was using, who his asset was. The FSB had known the alias Lucas was using, as well as his real name. Hell, the traitor had even given the FSB details about Polecat. Whoever it was that had burned him had to be well connected in order to have access to that level of information. But it could have been anyone in Section D. They all had access to the operation details. Zoe, Danny, and Tom had all known what alias Lucas was using. Hell, Lucas was to call Zoe every night to confirm that he was safe and that his cover was intact. _Right, because we all saw how well **that** went_.

“I’m not sure,” Lucas said, hesitatingly. It wasn’t a complete lie. He genuinely didn’t know who had betrayed him. He didn’t _want_ to believe that Tom or Zoe or Danny would have betrayed him. He didn’t _want_ to think that maybe Malcolm or Collin had let something slip. He didn’t _want_ to believe that Harry leaving him to rot in prison might mean something more than a section head deciding the cost to save his officer was too high. But what he wanted and what the facts were remained two separate things. Someone had betrayed him, someone he thought he could trust, and he had suffered for it. _God, did I suffer_.

Tom nodded. “I’ll look into it and keep you updated. Be careful, Lucas,” he said as he got up.

Lucas got to his feet as well and left money on the table to pay for the coffee. After a moment’s hesitation, Tom gave Lucas a hug, which Lucas returned tensely. It wasn’t a long hug, enough to say what neither of them wanted to voice, that they had missed the other’s company and, for eight years, each thought they would never see the other man again. When they broke apart, Tom gave Lucas’ bicep a squeeze.

“You got a phone yet?”

“Of course,” Lucas said, smiling.

“Legally or otherwise?” Tom teased.

“At risk of incriminating myself, I’m electing to not answer that.”

Tom laughed and Lucas grinned. At least some things never changed. Shaking his head as he did so, Tom leaned down to pick up a napkin. Taking a pen from his pocket, he scribbled his number on the napkin and handed it to Lucas. “Text me your address and I’ll bring your stuff over. When’d they tell you that you can move in?”

“Some time after midday,” Lucas said. “I’m thinking around one.”

“I’ll be there with your stuff.”

“Thanks, mate,” Lucas said.

Tom nodded farewell and disappeared into the crowd. Lucas lingered for a moment. He had that uneasy feeling that he was being watched. It took a fair bit of willpower, but Lucas resisted the urge to look around to see if he could pinpoint the source of his unease. Instead, Lucas pulled his jacket tighter around him, pocketed Tom’s number, and started making his way through the crowd. The feeling of being watched didn’t abate, so Lucas kept walking past his car, down to the tube station.

The tube was crowded, but he supposed that wasn’t entirely uncommon, and it served his purposes. Taking the stairs two at a time, Lucas ducked down into a darkened outcropping, pressing flat against the wall. While there weren’t many people that walked past his patch of shadows, none of the people that _did_ walk by noticed him. _Good_. But Lucas rather doubted it would be enough. _If_ someone really was following him and he wasn’t just being paranoid, they’d know to check the shadows.

Lucas waited ten minutes before stepping back out. He moved towards the main portion of the station, deliberately altering his gait and hunching his shoulders. When the tube came, Lucas got on at the last second. As far as he could tell, his unwanted voyeur hadn’t followed him on, but with the tube as crowded as it was, it was difficult to say.

At the next stop, Lucas glanced down the length of the tube and decided to wait until the stop after to get off. Not enough people were getting off at this stop and he’d stand out if he got off here. The next stop was closer to the downtown area and, undoubtedly, there’d be a fair number of people trying to get off and onto the tube, which would serve Lucas’ purposes well enough.

When the tube rumbled to a stop, Lucas didn’t bother hesitating to get off. Instead, he moved with the crowd and let them push him off the tube. A quick glance around the station didn’t show anyone immediately familiar, but Lucas wasn’t exactly expecting Harry – _or the FSB_ , Lucas thought grimly – to send someone he would recognize. Instead, Lucas merely moved towards the stairwell and hurried up the stairs. When he entered the street, he took off again, heading towards a nearby Sainsbury’s. He didn’t _feel_ like he was being watched anymore, certainly not like he had at the coffee shop, but he didn’t want to take any chances.

Lucas walked around the store haphazardly, going down some aisles and backtracking to go up other aisles. After about five minutes of wandering, Lucas slipped out of the store and started towards Thames House. When he got to Borough High Street, Lucas made a split decision to grab some doughnuts from Krispy Kreme. Harry wanted to meet with Lucas, no doubt to interrogate him over Kachimov, and Lucas wanted to try to glean some information of his own from Malcolm. He didn’t get the sense that he was being followed anymore, so he assumed that he had lost his unwanted tail. If it was one of Harry’s, Lucas had no doubt he’d hear all about it. If it wasn’t… well, then he was pretty damn glad that he had lost them.

Twenty minutes later, Lucas was standing in front of Thames House. He took a deep breath before stepping inside the building. _Show time_. Maybe, he’d even convince Harry to let him come back to work. _Right. And maybe Thatcher was the best thing to happen to this country._ Lucas supposed, on the positive side, at least he was back in England. Things could always be worse. _I could be back in Russia_. He shuddered as he stepped inside.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Wheee I suck at summaries! :) Alternate summary, provided by Zen: "Lucas does stuff and has feels."
> 
> Anywho! Originally, I was going to write a pre-Russia Lucas/Elizabeta fic because those two are so sweet, they give me cavities, but then I thought about how much I also love Lucas/Ros, so I decided I'd make a series out of it. This was originally supposed to be series 7 and 8, but then it sort of developed into its own beast, so I thought it'd work better on its own instead of combining it with series 8. I also decided that I wanted to fill out the series, so there will be scenes from the episodes, but also what I'm hoping to be a lot of background scenes as well to sort of fill in some of the gaps. Also, this is primarily focused on Lucas, but there is a fair amount of Ros in it as well. 
> 
> Also, as mentioned in the tags, there will be smut in this fic. While I have rated the fic as being explicit because of the smut, I will also make sure that the smut goes into its own chapter and that it is appropriately marked in the notes at the beginning of the chapter letting people know. Any important developments from the smut will also be included in the summary of the next chapter so that those who don't want to read smut can just skip over it without any worry! :) The rest of the fic would be rated I think around a T for canon-typical violence, but if that ever changes, I'll let you guys know!
> 
> Eternal love to Zen for reading this over for me! <3 And on the topic of the amazing Zen: The Ros in this fic is heavily inspired by the lovely [Zen and her RP blog for Ros](http://www.rxsmyers.tumblr.com). This is done with permission from Zen. While I do not make my version of Ros identical to Zen's, it _is_ heavily inspired by Zen and her hcs about Ros. Check her out! She's great! :D
> 
> And, just a quick disclaimer, I am not British (or European) so, while I do try to make the slang and terminology British-sounding, there will undoubtedly be errors and I apologize in advance for them.
> 
> Reading the other stories in the Songs universe is not required to follow this. Similarly, you don't have to read this to follow the other stories in the Songs universe.
> 
> Anyway, enough rambling, SatanFish! Hopefully, everyone enjoys! :)


	2. Chapter 2

It was strange, Ros thought, being back on the Grid and knowing that Adam wasn’t going to saunter through the pods with a vapid quip about what _she_ was doing back. Truly, it was remarkable, really, how quickly human resources had swept in and packed away Adam’s desk. Gone were the pictures of Fiona and West, the coffee mug with day old coffee inside, the endless piles of paperwork Adam was fond of avoiding. All that remained was a plain, unadorned desk with nothing but a computer, a keyboard, and a mouse on it. When Harry gave Ros Section D, he had offered her Adam’s now cleared desk. Ros turned him down.

It wasn’t the fact that Adam had died that bothered Ros. Certainly, it hurt her, but she had meant what she said to Harry when she told him that she had used the time away to move on, to give herself distance. She didn’t exactly want to pick up where they left off. Too much had happened between then and now for that to happen. But, Ros would be lying if she said that she had _completely_ moved on. Some part of her still cared about Adam. No matter how unsuited they were for each other, no matter how broken they were from the beginning, a part of her still loved Adam.

She wanted the Russians to pay for what they did. She wanted _vengeance_. She wanted to make Kachimov hurt the way he had made _her_ hurt. Maybe t’d happen soon. Maybe it’d happen years from now. But Ros _would_ get her revenge. She _would_ make Kachimov pay for Adam’s death.

Ros slammed the bin containing her things on the desk slightly harder than necessary. Ben glanced up from across the Grid, but Ros ignored his questioning look. Let him look. Let him wonder what Harry was thinking bringing her back and giving her Section D. Ros knew she was the best choice. Really, who else could Harry give the section to? Ben, who had only been a spook for six months? Jo, who, if Ros had read the reports right, still let her emotions get in the way of operations and was currently on stress leave? _Lucas_ , who wasn’t even cleared to be on the Grid and, frankly, was _far_ more untrustworthy than she was? At least she _had_ a reason for working with Yalta and had come clean about not only that reason, but her involvement with Yalta, with Harry.

No, unless Harry wanted to pull in another outside officer to fill the void, Ros was the logical choice. She was skilled, she had worked with the team before, and, whether Harry liked it or not, she was the best option. Bringing in an outsider wasn’t the right play, not when they wouldn’t _understand_ both her and Harry’s desire for revenge against the Russians. Ros knew her colleagues well enough to know how to unite them in spite of their grief and to focus their anger on the Russians. If Harry gave Section D to an outsider, he’d never see his desire for revenge sated.

Stiffly, Ros began arranging her new desk. With Jo and Ben following up on other leads, Harry had suggested she start getting her new desk in order. She wasn’t like Adam, though, and didn’t have a whole lot of personal effects to make the desk _hers_. It was a place to work, nothing more, nothing less. This particular desk had the added bonus of the desk pressed against it being empty. _May it stay that way_ , she thought as she put a succulent next to the computer. It was the only personal touch she added to the desk. She knew it was silly, having an attachment to a ridiculous little plant, but it had been one of the few things she had brought with her to Russia and it was one of the even fewer things she had brought back. Adam had given it to her the morning before her involvement with Yalta was discovered. Ros couldn’t bring herself to throw it out, no matter how unpractical travelling with a small plant was.

Her fingers lingered against the cool ceramic pot. Closing her eyes, Ros could remember the way Adam had paused yesterday before telling her where Tranquility had gone. She knew, as soon as he had hesitated, as soon as he had swallowed hard and told her where to go when she stepped towards him, that Adam didn’t expect to survive. It was poetic, really. In the wake of Fiona’s death, Adam had always been more reckless than normal. Anyone could tell it was only a matter of time before his recklessness got him killed. _Except none of us thought it’d be because of Kachimov’s machinations_.

Ros pulled her hand back as if she had been burned. Adam was dead. He wasn’t going to come through the pods, he wasn’t going to make a joke that she had kept the plant, and he certainly wasn’t going to continue a relationship with her.

“Ros, my office please,” Harry said, cutting through her reverie. Ros glanced up at Harry and nodded once. She took another look at the plant before sliding it into the rubbish. _It’s time to let Adam go_.

Following Harry into his office, she shut the door behind her and took a seat. Harry looked agitated as he sat down. Folding her hands in her lap, Ros waited. She had worked with Harry long enough to know that, if he was agitated, it was for good reason. Or Ruth broke a nail. Either one. _But Ruth isn’t here anymore for him to worry about_.

Finally, Harry looked up at her. “To foil the cyber attack, we have to use the asset we have who’s closest to the Russians.”

Ros had expected that the impromptu meeting would be about the operation. She hadn’t expected it’d be about using Section D’s latest damaged goods. _How desperate are you that you’re going to take someone fresh from prison and put him up against someone like Kachimov?_ “You want to use Lucas?” she asked with no small amount of incredulity.

“He has a relationship with Kachimov,” Harry said, as if that justified everything.

“ _Kachimov_ was responsible for Adam’s death, Harry,” Ros said. And, if what Lucas had said about Kachimov earlier was anything to go by, then they’d be making a mistake putting him against the FSB officer. Lucas’ assertion that Kachimov was the only company he had was worrisome. The fact that he further distinguished between _interrogators_ and _Kachimov_ left Ros convinced that Lucas couldn’t be trusted, not where Kachimov was concerned.

“And I said we _will_ have revenge,” Harry said. Ros looked away. “This is the start.”

Ros pursed her lips. This wasn’t a start. This was a bloody mistake. She shook her head once before looking back up at Harry again. If the revenge angle wouldn’t work, then she’d go right to the heart of her concern. “Lucas is damaged goods. You want to put him up against a man like Kachimov?”

“I said before -“ Harry started, but Ros cut him off, “Yeah, he was one of the best. _Was_.”

“ _If_ this submarine attack takes place, it’s not just the economy that will scream. There will be civilian casualties. We’ve only got two hours and I’m running short of options, Ros.”

 _Clearly_ , she thought. This plan of Harry’s was a risk. Even if Lucas still _was_ half as good as Harry thought he was, there was still the fact that Kachimov wasn’t some rookie spook that would be easily manipulated into giving up damning information. Kachimov had been in the business for a long time and was cunning. He knew how to play the espionage game. He’d see MI-5 using Lucas to get the codes for what it was - a desperate ploy by desperate people. Not to mention there was the question of Lucas’ loyalty. Eight years was a long time. At best, Lucas was damaged. At worst…. _We can’t trust him. Not with the fate of the United Kingdom on our hands_.

Finally, Ros asked, “Do you trust him?”

Harry pursed his lips and stood up. He walked towards the wall, keeping his back to her. Ros leaned back in her chair. Whatever Harry’s thoughts were on the matter, he evidently didn’t want her to know. After a few seconds, Harry said, “Bring him in. Let’s talk.” He turned around to face her and checked his watch. “He left his house ten minutes ago.”

Ros lifted an eyebrow and leaned forward in her seat. “You’ve had the place under surveillance?” _You didn’t_ ** _tell_** _me that you had Lucas under surveillance?_ That was… discomfiting.

“Of course,” Harry said, as if it should have been obvious.

She pursed her lips, wondering if Harry had kept things like this from Adam. “Do you know where he is now?” If she had said anything else, she might let slip the anger that threatened to bubble over.

“No. Try his ex-wife, Elizabeta Starkova.”

Ros thought it unlikely Lucas would be at his ex-wife’s home, attempting to woo her back. Still, she pulled out her phone and said, “I’ll get Jo onto it. I’ll go around to Lucas’ flat, see what he’s done with the place.” If nothing else, she could trash it the way she had rampaged through her hotel room, maybe get rid of some of her anger.

Without waiting to be dismissed, Ros got to her feet and swept out of the room. She’d deal with Harry keeping secrets from her later. For now, she had a job to do and a submarine attack to foil.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As always, thank you thank you thank you to Zen for reading this over and making sure I have Ros' voice right! :)
> 
> Also, thank you to all the lovely people who have read chapter 1 and/or left kudos!


	3. Chapter 3

Ros gripped the steering wheel tightly enough that her knuckles were turning white. Not even a day on the job and Harry was already withholding information from her. It would have been one thing if it had been something trivial that he had neglected to tell her. But this? The fact that he had Lucas under surveillance and didn’t tell her? This wasn’t just some minor detail that Harry  _neglected_ to tell her. It was Ros’ job, now, to oversee the team. If Harry really did want to bring Lucas back to the Grid one day and back onto the team, then she deserved to know that he was running surveillance on Lucas.

Harry had given her Section D, but Ros was starting to think that it was more of a symbolic gesture than anything else. He didn’t trust her, evidently. Harry had always kept secrets from the Grid, but this went beyond merely keeping secrets. She found herself wondering if he would have withheld this information from Adam of if Harry keeping important decisions regarding potential and current officers from section chiefs was a new development.

Part of Ros, a part that she didn’t like to listen to very often, questioned if it was because of her role in the coup or because of Yalta that lead to Harry not trusting her with this information. While Ros had never agreed to go as far as her father or Collingwood were willing to go to ensure that the interests of the British people were protected, she… didn’t exactly  _disagree_  with their motivations. She’d helped them until it became clear that they had lost sight of what they had initially set out to do. Did Harry hold her father’s sins against her? Or was it her involvement with Yalta?

More likely, Ros thought, it had to do with Ruth. She had never apologized for her role in Ruth’s departure, nor would she. As far as Ros was concerned, she didn’t  _do_  anything that warranted apologizing. Harry had been the one to overlook the rules because it was  _Ruth_. Still, Ruth had always been Harry’s weak spot. She supposed it was possible that, even after all this time, he was still angry with her and still blamed her for Ruth having to flee the country.

No matter Harry’s motivations, having him withhold information from her was frustrating to say the least. She had been willing to die for Harry. If Adam hadn’t switched the poison, she  _would_  have died for Harry. And now he was keeping her in the dark? She didn’t like it.

Parking the car, Ros closed her eyes. Now wasn’t the time to be angry with Harry. He wasn’t wrong. They only had a little under two hours to stop the attack. She could be angry at Harry later, could even voice her displeasure at being kept in the dark. But, for now, she needed to present a unified front with Harry. She needed Jo and Ben to find Lucas and she needed to get ahead of Kachimov  _before_  he launched the attack.

Before she had left, Malcolm had given her a copy of the key to Lucas’ flat. Not only did Harry have Lucas under surveillance without her knowledge, but he’d apparently had a copy of the key made without telling her too. Still, at least this way she wouldn’t look as out of place picking the lock.  _Thank God for small mercies_ , she thought wryly.

Taking one last deep breath, Ros got out of the car and glanced both ways along the road. She’d rather not have Lucas walking in on her searching his flat and, with Harry not knowing Lucas’ exact location, she was reluctant to take unnecessary risks. The coast clear, Ros slipped inside the building and glanced up the stairs. Lucas was on the first floor in flat number one.  _At least he’s not up on the fifth floor_. Glancing up the stairwell, Ros confirmed that the stairs were empty before making her way towards Lucas’ flat. With one last look to make sure everything was still clear, Ros slid the key into the lock, opened the door, and stepped inside the flat.

Ros wasn’t quite sure what she had expected Lucas’ flat to look like. She didn’t know him particularly well, nor did she overly  _want_  to get to know him, but she had to admit, she was… not expecting what she saw. Books, clothes, bins, and boxes were strewn across the floor. She thought she spied a few old CDs littering the hall floor as well. There was barely any clear space on the floor. Ros pursed her lips and pulled out her phone as she carefully tried to step in the clear spaces without disturbing anything.

“Harry,” Ros said as soon as Harry picked up. She hopped to the next clear space.

“Ros?”

“Either Lucas is a very mucky puppy,” Ros said as she made her way to the living room, “which is unlikely for someone who’s just spent eight years under the regime of strict prison discipline, or,” Ros paused and looked around dispassionately. “Everything in this room’s been carefully positioned. Either way, I’m not searching it.”

She thought that she heard Harry utter a swear before he said, “Fifth floor. Flat nine.”

_Looks like I’m going up to the fifth floor_ ** _anyway_**. Ros hung up and made her way carefully back to the door. She  _almost_  vindictively kicked a path, but decided not to risk it. No need to announce to Lucas that he was under surveillance or that someone had visited his flat while he was out. Especially when she had used a key.

Giving the stairs a misgiving look, Ros began climbing. She was around the third floor when her phone started to ring. She sighed, secretly hoping it was Harry, as she answered, “Yeah?”

“She’s leaving the building. No sign of Lucas,” Jo said.

Ros rubbed her forehead. She hated being right, sometimes. It would have been awfully  _convenient_ if Lucas was acting like a lovesick puppy, moaning over how his ex-wife had left him and trying to get her back. Instead, he apparently was smart enough to stay away from her.  _Damn_. Still, they didn’t have very many options left to them. If there was a chance that Lucas might turn up around Elizabeta, she had to take that risk. She couldn’t afford to pull Jo and Ben off Elizabeta only to find out later that Elizabeta had met with her ex-husband.

“Thanks, Jo,” Ros said. “Stay on her.”

Her orders given, Ros hung up and climbed the last few steps. Taking a moment to catch her breath, she walked up to flat nine and knocked on the door. After a few seconds, the door swung open and a kindly elderly woman stood on the stoop, looking up at Ros. From what Ros knew of Lucas, this woman was probably the perfect person to run surveillance on him. No one would expect the elderly grandmother upstairs to be working for MI-5.

“Pest control,” Ros said neutrally. She didn’t bother with the niceties, not when time was of the essence. “Anything on the video surveillance?”

The woman sighed and pursed her lips. “They used to send a nice young man.”

Ros could have screamed. She really could not care less about who MI-5  _used_  to send, certainly not when the Russians were about to launch a major operation. “Any movement of note?”

“There was something earlier,” the elderly woman said. “At the table. He wrote something down, but I wasn’t able to see what it was, and then he started emptying bins on the floor.”

“What did he write the note on?”

“A notepad.”

Ros lifted an eyebrow. “And where did he put this notepad?”

“Under the bin nearest to the coffee table,” the woman said.

“Thank you,” Ros said, tilting her head at the woman before hurrying back down the stairs.

When Ros returned to Lucas’ flat, she felt the urge to kick Lucas’ things out of the way and clear a path to the bin in question. Taking a deep breath to calm the urge to let her frustration show, Ros quickly made her way towards the bin the elderly woman had said to look under. Squatting down, Ros checked underneath it and, sure enough, there was the notepad. As she examined it, she hoped that Lucas wasn’t smart enough to rip off the next few pages after his little note.

_Somewhere in this mess, there has to be a pencil_. Ros surveyed the room quickly before thinking to check the bin. Sure enough, there were stationary and desk supplies stashed in the bin. On top of a pile of loose paper was a sharpened pencil. Ros pursed her lips.  _How sloppy_. Evidently, prison hadn’t been as kind to Lucas’ skills as a spy as Harry thought as she started to rub the pencil against the notepad. While staging the flat was admittedly smart of Lucas, stashing the notepad under a bin of office supplies wasn’t his most brilliant idea. If  _she_  had been the one to stage the flat, she would have ripped off the next few pages, first of all, and then put the notebook farther away from office supplies.

As soon as Ros read over what Lucas had written on the previous page, her face paled. “Oh, crap.”  _Harry’s not going to like this_. On the one hand, now they had confirmation that Kachimov was involved in the impending attack. On the other hand…. Harry had made it clear to Ros that he had a blindspot when it came to Lucas. He had given Lucas clearance over the weekend to assist with the operation and it had resulted in Adam’s death. Now, Ros was wondering how much of that was  _actually_  Lucas failing to get the code and Lucas… not trying as hard as he could to get the code from Tranquility.

Ros pulled her phone out of her pocket and called Harry’s direct line. “Ros?” he asked.

“Harry,” she hesitated for a brief moment before saying, “I’m afraid we’ve gone bobbing for a bad apple. Lucas is a double agent.” After a second’s hesitation, Ros added, “You were right to be cautious.”

“On this occasion, I’d be happy to have been wrong,” Harry said quietly. “We’ll need to bring him in, still.”

“Of course,” Ros said. “I’ll see if Jo has anything.”

Harry hung up and Ros sat back on her heels.  _Damn it_. First the loss of Adam, now the revelation that Lucas was a double agent. She’d have to watch Harry carefully. Ros remembered how Harry was when Ruth was forced to flee the country. While she rather doubted that Harry harboured secret feelings for Lucas, she would rather not have a repeat of Harry suffering a meltdown because his pet officer had gone rogue when Section D  _needed_  Harry.

Ros got to her feet and tossed the notepad in the bin. No matter how concerned she was for Harry, he was right. They had to bring Lucas in and find a way to get Kachimov to talk. At least now they knew Kachimov was responsible for more than _just_  Adam’s death. “If Harry doesn’t kill Kachimov, I will,” Ros muttered as she dialled Jo’s number.

“Yeah?” Jo asked.

“Tell me you have something,” Ros said. She decided against telling Jo about Lucas’ rogue status.

“Maybe. Starkova just went into Highgate Cemetery.”

“Thanks. Keep your distance, I’ll be right there,” Ros said and hung up.  _Time to go bobbing for apples_.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Eternal love to Zen for being my amazing beta reader <3 (Why, yes, I am going to put this on every chapter, heh).


	4. Chapter 4

Ros stewed the entire drive to Highgate Cemetery. She knew she shouldn’t be surprised. Really, she shouldn’t. She knew how Harry got whenever it came to people that were important to him and she could _tell_ that there was history between Lucas and Harry. All she had to do was see the way Lucas had looked at Harry, like he was lost and desperate for Harry to throw him a life preserver, and the way Harry _couldn’t_ look at Lucas, to know that there was something more than the typical Section Chief, Section Head relationship. Of course Harry didn’t think Lucas would turn, even after eight years of torture. Harry was so damned desperate to trust Lucas that he was willing to overlook _basic_ facts. No one came out of eight years under strict Russian discipline the same. No one lasted eight years without breaking.

No, what _infuriated_ Ros was that _she_ should have guessed sooner that Lucas was rotten. There was no way someone like Kachimov, a chess player _if_ Lucas was to be believed, would give up a bargaining chip like Harry’s pet officer, certainly not to save some face. Kachimov giving Lucas up for such a low price should have been all the clues she needed. Instead, she let Harry’s opinion override her instincts. She had thought there was something about Lucas, something _off_. He was far too… candid about the Russians’ attempts to turn him. He said all the right words to twist that knife of guilt in Harry’s gut and Harry fell for it _hard_. Now, Lucas was about to tip off the Russians that MI-5 knew about the imminent attack. _Crap_.

She couldn’t think of where Lucas got the information. The fact that Lucas was a field officer and not a technician said that he didn’t have the ability to hack into MI-5’s computers. The only method Lucas could have obtained that information was _someone_ being sloppy when he had come onto the Grid earlier for questioning. _Connie?_ No, too experienced. _Jo?_ Wasn’t on the Grid yet. _Malcolm?_ Maybe. He had been the one listening to the submarine. But _surely_ he wasn’t so sloppy to let Lucas hear classified information? _Either way, I’ll have to speak to him._

Ros took a turn harder than she should have and was honked at. She ignored them. National security was a _touch_ more important to her than the delicate sensibilities of some old biddy driver. _They probably follow the speed limit, too_ , she thought grumpily.

As she pulled up to the cemetery, Ros snatched her stun gun from the glove compartment. If she was lucky, there would be enough people there today that she could sneak up to Lucas and hit him before he could flee. Maybe, she’d even get a look at his handler and could have Jo and Ben pick them up. She only hoped that Lucas actually _was_ at the cemetery. It was a long shot, she knew, but if Elizabeta was here, maybe, just _maybe_ if Ros was lucky, Lucas would be hiding in some bushes and pining away for his lost love.

 _Or he’ll be sitting on a bench beside her_ , Ros thought as she finally spied Lucas and Elizabeta. Lucas had his back to Ros, thankfully, and Elizabeta was starting to walk away. When Lucas called to her and she turned towards him, Ros picked a random grave - _Helen Flynn_ \- and studied it. She bowed her head, playing the role of quiet mourner, lest Elizabeta think anything amiss, but kept Lucas in her peripherals. At this distant, she could make out what the two ex-lovebirds were saying, much to her annoyance.

“Happiness isn’t about getting what we want. It’s about appreciating what we have,” Elizabeta was saying. Ros did her best to ignore the pang of _pain_ that shot through her. _Adam_. “So, yes, I’m happy. One day, you’ll be happy too.”

Elizabeta turned to walk away. Still, Lucas kept his back to her. He had stood up to watch his ex-wife depart, and Ros took full advantage of the gravel crunching beneath Elizabeta’s feet to mask her own approach. As she got closer to Lucas, she reached into her back pocket and pulled out her stun gun.

Lucas spun abruptly. His eyes widened and Ros channeled every bit of _rage_ into her words as she practically spat, “You didn’t really believe all that happiness crap, did you?” She didn’t wait for his reply. Instead, she pulled the trigger and slammed her stun gun against his shoulder. He loosed a cry and fell, unmoving, to the ground. “I hope you hit your head hard on the way down,” Ros said as she pocketed her stun gun.

Taking advantage of Lucas’ temporary disorientation, Ros jerked a zip tie from her pocket and quickly tied his wrists together. _No sense making it easy for Lucas_. She… may… have tightened the zip tie more than necessary, but, really, it was just a precaution. _And not at all because he’s the bloody reason Adam’s_ ** _dead_**. She had to resist the urge to kick Lucas. She may, though, have _gently nudged_ a rock in his leg’s direction as she waited for his wits to return. As appealing as dragging Lucas to the car sounded, she would rather not expend _that_ much effort when she could wait a few seconds for him to recover and walk him back to the car under threat of being stun gunned again.

Finally, Lucas growled, “Ouch.”

“Good,” Ros said. “Get up.”

He bared his teeth, but did as she ordered. She watched him rotate his wrists inside the zip tie. “Bit tight, don’t you think?” he said coolly.

Ros smiled thinly. “Walk.”


	5. Chapter 5

“How’s the nervous system?” Ros asked. Lucas thought she sounded _entirely_ too chipper about stun gunning him. _How do you fucking think?_ Lucas thought rather uncharitably.

Still, Lucas knew better than to follow his instinct and mouth off. “Twitchy,” Lucas snapped instead. _So much better_. He rubbed his eyes and took a sip of water. “This is a mistake.”

“I’m glad you didn’t waste those years tying to memorize convincing excuses,” Harry said. Lucas tried not to let Harry’s words sting. It was to be expected. They had discovered his deception faster than he thought they would and _of course_ they thought Lucas was working for Kachimov. Hell, _he_ would think the same thing in their position.

“Maybe Kachimov should add that to his curriculum,” Ros said.

Lucas clenched his jaw, forcing his anger down before he said, “You should be following Elizabeta.”

“We _are_ following Elizabeta,” Ros said. Lucas winced as she put emphasis on ‘ _beta_ ’. _Vyeta would have hated that_. He almost smiled in sad, fond memory of his ex-wife exercising extreme patience, far more than he ever had, while gently correcting others’ pronunciation of her name.

“Come on, Lucas, impress me with your ability to talk your way out of this,” Harry said. He sounded… tired. _Defeated_.

If it had been anyone else telling Lucas that, he would have stayed resolutely silent. If he had learned anything in the past eight years, it was that silence always irritated interrogators. They couldn’t glean anything if your answer was always to be silent. Certainly, Lucas had sometimes given out-dated information or even, on a few occasions, completely false information, but that had always been more of a survival tactic than a genuine need to say something to stop the torture. The second the FSB thought he was no longer a valuable asset was the same second he would find himself actually going to an execution instead of another mock execution.

But the words weren’t coming from another FSB interrogator. Certainly, the circumstances were similar. Lucas was under no illusions. He might not be in a cell, but he was certainly being interrogated and, if he mistepped, he’d find himself back in cells and he wasn’t so sure he’d make it out again if he went back to prison. No, the words were coming from Harry Pearce. Lucas’ mouth felt dry and he wasn’t entirely certain if it was an after effect of being stun gunned or if it was because it was Harry thinking that Lucas genuinely was a Russian mole. _I stayed loyal. I swear. I did_.

“I agreed to be Kachimov’s agent in London, of course I did, but just to get back.” He looked away. The weight of Harry’s stare continued to bore into him, so he added, “To come home.” Lucas looked up at Harry and tried to ignore the desperate need for Harry to believe him. _I’m loyal. I’ve always been loyal. They didn’t break me. Please, please believe me._ When Harry’s stare didn’t waver, Lucas said, “God knows I couldn’t rely on you to do it for me.” He wasn’t entirely able to keep the bitterness he felt from colouring his words.

“And you failed to mention this earlier?” Ros asked from behind him. He resisted the urge to flinch. “Why?”

“I told you in the car,” Lucas said to Harry, ignoring Ros as he shook his head. Lucas stared resolutely at the cup of water on the table, not entirely wanting to see the expression on Harry’s face at the admission.

“You _joked_ about it in the car.”

“You expected it anyway, you as good as told me so. If I admitted it officially, you’d have locked me in a cell and debriefed me for months on end and,” Lucas paused, forcing himself to keep his voice steady as he looked back up at Harry. He wasn’t sure how he felt that Harry had actually believed he had just been joking. _It seems Kachimov was right about that, at least._ Still, terror ate away at him and he felt hints of nausea at the thought that he might very well be going back to prison. “I’ve seen enough of cells.” As he spoke, Lucas wasn’t sure if he was talking to Harry or himself so he took another steadying breath. “So I decided to prove myself by bringing Kachimov to you.”

Harry pointed at him, a sarcastic smile stretching across his face. “This is actually rather good.”

“Because it has the advantage of being true,” Lucas cut in. He couldn’t let panic set in, _couldn’t_. As soon as he lost control, as soon as the panic took over, he’d wind up in another cell and he’d rather put a bullet in his head than go back there.

“You passed on deeply sensitive information to the head of the FSB in London in order to bring him down,” Harry said.

“Yes, I did.”

“Explain to me how that works,” Harry said, disbelief colouring his words.

Lucas leaned forward slightly. _Don’t look intimidated. Don’t look weak or frightened._ “Kachimov ordered me to find out about a message that you may have intercepted, something originating from the ocean.”

“And you decided to find it and tell him?”

Lucas nodded once. “I did.”

“Why?” Ros demanded.

“Because he _knows_ what the message is, he _knows_ where it came from, and he _knows_ that you’ve intercepted it,” Lucas snapped. He took another breath. Losing his temper wouldn’t help him. “He’s testing me. He’s sending me out to get something that he already knows. It’s the only way he can prove my worth as an asset and Kachimov really, _really_ needs to trust me. It’s his greatest vulnerability. He’s embarked on a major operation and, in the chaos that follows, he’s going to need a man on the inside.”

“Because that way he can stay one step ahead of any possible retaliation,” Harry said, realization dawning on his face.

“He wants you,” Lucas said as he leaned back in his chair, “he wants all of us, dancing to his tune.”

Harry scrutinized Lucas. “If you’re lying to me, you won’t get so much as a funeral.”

The threat hit Lucas harder than he expected and he swallowed hard. But it meant that Harry might trust him, _might_ believe him when he said that he was genuinely MI-5. Lucas carefully considered his next words, acutely aware that they could be the only things keeping him from another cell. “I sent Elizabeta to meet Kachimov because I had to get him out of that embassy. I have to get him out and on his own if I’m going to turn him.” Lucas leaned forward, pushing his point, “I know you want him, Harry. So do I. This is your chance, your one chance, take it, now, right now, or let him go.”

Harry stared at Lucas. His face gave nothing away, gave no indication of his thoughts or if he believed Lucas. There was no small amount of internal elation when he saw Harry’s small nod to Ros. _I did it._

“We need you to get the submarine’s remote access protocols. They’ll be inside the Russian embassy,” Ros said as she finally moved from behind him to sit at the conference table.

“How much time do we have?” Lucas asked. He didn’t let his relief show, lest it be misinterpreted. Ros and Harry already made it clear that they didn’t trust him, but if they needed those remote access protocols, then they had no choice _but_ to trust him. If they wanted Kachimov, they needed him. _It’s the after I’m worried about._

“Less than an hour,” Ros said with the barest hint of a smile.

 _Right then._ Turn Kachimov and extract the codes, all within less than an hour. No problem, he thought. He hoped.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ahhh I'm so sorry, I meant to update this probably two or three weeks ago, but life got busy and I just never got a chance to upload! So, as an apology, have a bonus chapter! :) 
> 
> Much love to Zen for beta'ing this for me <3


	6. Chapter 6

Ros leaned back in her chair, uncertain what to think of what had just transpired. She didn’t trust Lucas. She didn’t like that Harry was trusting Lucas to turn Kachimov, and she _certainly_ didn’t like that Harry knew Lucas had joked about agreeing to spy for Kachimov without telling her. She found herself wondering, bitterly, if Harry ever kept Adam in the dark like this, or if it was a new development reserved for her. How was she supposed to oversee the section if Harry was keeping secrets from her? Especially when those secrets put the entirety of Section D at risk? First the fact that Harry had Lucas under surveillance and now this? _What else are you keeping from me?_

She pursed her lips. Ros didn’t like the idea of pinning their hopes on the man that may have been more involved in Adam’s death than they had initially believed. Of course, Lucas had submitted a report stating that Tranquility had bitten down on some cyanide and that he had failed to get it out of her mouth in time. The fact that, only a few hours previous, Lucas had admitted to _jokingly_ telling Harry he agreed to spy for Kachimov and Harry _still_ gave Lucas clearance to assist with the case infuriated Ros all the more. Harry _knew_ there was a risk, giving Lucas clearance and telling him to go after the Russian assassin, and he did it anyway. _And Adam died because of it_.

It didn’t help that Lucas knew Harry too well. If Lucas had _joked_ about agreeing to spy for the Russians to _her_ , Ros would have done exactly what he had said - thrown him into a cell and debriefed him until they could ascertain the extent of the damage. But because it _was_ Harry, Lucas could manipulate him. It worried Ros that Harry didn’t seem to consider the very likely possibility that Lucas was manipulating him now. _And Harry is holding information back from me_.

“You know he could be playing us still,” Ros said, finally, as she stared at the door. And he could be. He was smart enough to stage his entire flat to hide the notepad, yet hadn’t thought to rip off the next few pages? He had books and clothes scattered everywhere, yet conveniently had a pencil in the bin that he was using to hide the incriminating notepad? It didn’t add up. _Almost as if he wanted us to find out the truth._ It was unsettling, at the very least, especially in conjunction with the doubt gnawing at her about just how hard he had tried to get the code from Tranquility. On the one hand, Lucas could very well be genuine in wanting to bring Kachimov on. On the other hand, Ros knew the value of sacrificing a pawn to protect a higher, more well positioned piece. Maybe this was the Russians’ plan all along, sacrifice Kachimov so that Harry would trust Lucas, thereby giving them the inside man they so desperately wanted in MI-5.

“He could be,” Harry agreed as he stared down the table. “But we have to take that risk. We need those protocols.”

She stared at the door. They were playing with fire. There were too many ifs for Ros to be content with the turn of events. _If_ Lucas was telling the truth, _if_ Lucas could turn Kachimov, maybe, just _maybe_ , they could avert disaster. She hated the idea of depending on an unknown variable, though, even if she knew there wasn’t any other way. None of them were going to get that code from Kachimov, not without Dolby’s approval or starting a diplomatic incident. But Lucas… Lucas might just be able to get Kachimov out of the embassy and get the code from him. Assuming, of course, he wasn’t Kachimov’s. If he was… _Well, he won’t get us the codes in time and we’ll have our answer._

“I hope you’re right about this,” Ros said dubiously.

“Me too,” Harry agreed. “Me too.”

\--

“I’m not sure I like what you’ve done with the house,” Lucas said as he turned to face his wife – _ex-wife_ , he reminded himself. He still held the picture that her son had drawn, but was no longer looking at it. Looking at it hurt too much, reminded him of hopes and dreams he and Elizabeta had had a lifetime ago. She had always wanted to have a kid, while he had always had reservations because of his job. _At least one of us got what we wanted._

Elizabeta grabbed the picture he had been studying out of his hand and angrily put it back on the fridge. “My tastes have changed.”

“I’m sure they have,” he said softly. When she said nothing, just stared at him coldly, Lucas forced himself to ignore the pain in his heart and took a deep breath. “We have your boss, Elizabeta.”

Confusion flitted across her face. “Your boss too.”

Lucas, imperceptibly, shook his head once, considering his words carefully. _You lied to me, and now your lies are coming back to haunt you._ He could lie to her, could pretty up what he was about to try to pull off. But he had lied to her enough. “No,” he said finally. With an edge of certainty, he said, “You weren’t FSB when we married. When did Kachimov turn you?”

She hesitated and, in that moment, he knew that his guess had been right. If she really had been FSB, she wouldn’t have hesitated before spinning a new lie. _She would have been like me, easily lying to someone she cared about once._ “He approached me… a little over a year ago. Told me you’d been arrested,” she said as she stepped forward, but was almost careful to keep the counter between them, “but you were alive and that you could come home if I helped him.”

Lucas braced himself against the counter as he leaned forward. “Why did you say yes?” He needed to know. It was irrational, he knew, but some small part of him hoped that maybe… maybe they could reconcile. He knew it was irrational. He knew there was no going back to the way they had been. But, still, he found himself asking, “Why put yourself at risk?” _I need to know_.

“He showed me photographs of you in that place.” Lucas felt the invisible knife in his stomach twist. _No._ Her eyes dropped to his forearms, just below where he had rolled up his sleeves. He didn’t need to follow her gaze to know what she was looking at. “Your skin.”

Abruptly self-conscious, he quickly covered the tattoos. Lucas blinked several times, at a loss for words. She had seen him in the darkness, had seen something he would wish on no one. He wondered what, exactly she had seen. Kachimov insisted on taking a picture every year. “To send to Harry, make sure that he knows you’re still here,” Kachimov would say. Lucas could remember bitterly wondering if those pictures ever did make it to Harry, or if they were just another ploy of Kachimov’s to turn him. Now, he found himself wondering how many of them and _which_ of them were used to turn Elizabeta.

 _I’m sorry. I’m so sorry._ He wanted to say the words to her, but his throat constricted.

“He said it would be easier on you if…,” Elizabeta continued, “if you believed I had always worked for him.”

“Well, he’s a very clever man, Elizabeta.” Lucas wet his lips, finding his voice again. “But he’s not a good man.”

“So now? You arrest me?” Elizabeta demanded. It hurt that she thought he would. It hurt him even more that, if he didn’t get her to agree, he _was_ under orders to arrest her. “I can tell you now I know nothing of value.”

“My friends want to throw you to the lions. It would be so easy to implicate you, to make it look like you and Kachimov were working together for MI-5.” Lucas paused, letting his words sink in. “Because that’s what I am. I’m MI-5. I was MI-5 when we married, MI-5 all those years in prison, and I’m MI-5 now. Whatever your reasons for working with Kachimov, you need to think about protecting your family, so let me help you.”

“How?” He could hear the fear in her voice. She knew as well as he did that her situation was precarious at best. Elizabeta had always been perceptive and, while she likely didn’t realize just how dangerous a position she was in, Lucas had no doubt that she knew that her next words could be the difference between seeing her son again or not.

 _I have her._ He wasn’t sure how he felt about it. He wanted to protect her. Hell, he had lied to her all those years about his work because he never wanted to put her at risk. If he did this, if he went through with his orders, there’d be no turning back, Lucas knew. For three years, he’d always had to choose between Vyeta and Harry, between being a loving husband and being a spook. And, for three years, he’d always chosen Harry. He’d always put work first and it had strained his marriage.

He almost smiled bitterly. Eight years’ of keeping his emotions away from the surface, of wearing a carefully constructed mask, kept his thoughts off his face. He could still remember that day when he went to Moscow. Elizabeta had accused him of having an affair and, honestly, he couldn’t even _fault_ her for thinking that. How could he? All she knew was that he was routinely getting home late and having to leave at all hours of the day _and_ night. And all he could tell her, then, was that he wasn’t, that he loved _her_ , and that he’d talk with her when he got home. He’d promised himself, and her without saying as much, that he’d give her the truth and damn Harry and his ridiculous order not to divulge that information to someone who “potentially may have Russian ties.”

Lucas had to admit, when he had made the promise to talk to her, he never thought _this_ would be the conversation he’d be having with her.

 _If I do this, if I push…_ He’d lose her for good, he knew. If Lucas used her the way Kachimov did, he’d be no better than the other man. _Didn’t I just say that Kachimov isn’t a very good man? And now I want to put her in the same position Kachimov put her in_. But what choice did he have? If he didn’t, if he refused to turn her, then Harry would take it as proof that he was colluding with the Russians, and throw him in a cell. If he did… _If I do this, if I ask her to work for us, then_ ** _I’ll_** _the one putting her at risk_. He made a vow ten years ago on their wedding day that he’d never intentionally harm her. And now he was asking her to put herself at risk, all because Harry asked him to.

He didn’t miss having to make these decisions. He didn’t miss having to choose between Vyeta and MI-5.

“Work for us,” he said softly, almost gently. _Don’t think about manipulating her. Don’t think about putting her at risk._

Elizabeta frowned. “Were you always this cold? Under the skin?” Lucas didn’t answer her. What could he say? That he wasn’t entirely certain she was wrong? That prison had, whether he wanted it to or not, changed him? That he wasn’t convinced all of him made it out of that cell? So he said nothing, merely watched her. “Or was that man I knew just a lie?”

“If you don’t let me do this, they will take everything away from you, this life, this happiness, it will all be gone. I know what that’s like and there are no words to describe how terrible it is.” He forced himself to stop. Saying any more than that risked delving into memories that he’d rather not share with anyone, much less with Elizabeta.

Elizabeta stared at him as Lucas let his words sink in. Neither one of them said anything, nor moved. He had meant what he had said. There were no words that could encompass the pain of losing everything, the knowledge that there was no going back to that happiness he had once had. He wouldn’t wish it on very many people, certainly not Elizabeta. _Please, please let me help you. Let me help._

Suddenly, Lucas heard keys turning in the front door, shortly followed by the door opening. A man’s voice called a greeting as he stepped into the house. Elizabeta turned towards the door and, as she did, Lucas twisted around, grabbed his jacket, and started walking out the way he had come in. He could hear her say, “My husband is home,” but he was already gone by the time she had turned around.

_Like a ghost._


	7. Chapter 7

For a moment, Lucas stood in the hall and pressed his forehead to his door. Elizabeta had text him to confirm that she’d work for them, but only on the condition that Lucas kept her family safe. He hadn’t answered her text yet. Lucas wasn’t even sure what _to_ say. He read what she hadn’t said, that he had made his choice. _At least Vyeta can’t say she’s surprised_ , he thought bitterly.

He pressed his knuckles against the wood. She was the only thing that got him through those eight years. Every torture, every humiliation, _everything_ , promising himself he’d see Vyeta again was what got him through it. And now he had made sure that there was no chance of ever reconciling with her. Lucas wasn’t sure what he had hoped when he got out of prison. He wanted Elizabeta to be happy, really, he did, whether that was with him or with someone else or with no one else. He wanted her to be _happy_. And she had said she was. But turning her, forcing her to work for MI-5 the way Kachimov had forced her to work for the FSB, and putting her at risk… there was no coming back from that.

 _Fuck you, Harry_ , he thought as his lips curled in a snarl. On the way home, Lucas had stopped at the liquor store and picked up a bottle of vodka. He was starting to think he might have a _bit_ more to drink tonight than he had initially intended when he bought it. Maybe, if he drank enough, he might even manage to get a few hours of sleep.

With that less than cheery thought, Lucas unlocked the door to his flat and paused. Something wasn’t right. The fine hairs on the back of his neck stood on end and Lucas quickly glanced over his shoulder. No one behind him. He stepped back out of his flat to look up the stairwell, just in case he had missed someone standing there while he was partaking in a brief moment of self-pity. No one. He frowned and looked back into his flat, trying to figure out what the cause of his abrupt discomfort was.

Before leaving to meet with Elizabeta earlier, Lucas had staged his flat. He wanted to confirm what he already thought, that MI-5 had him under surveillance. He was fairly certain that his neighbour, the one with the macaroons, was working for MI-5 and Harry and Ros confronting him earlier after he passed on the intel to Elizabeta only confirmed his suspicion that he was under close watch. Still, he wanted to know the extent of the surveillance. Did they have cameras or did they have audio? Did they have someone following him? The easiest way he could think of to answer one of the questions was to stage his flat. He had wanted them to find the notepad, had even left a pencil within easy reach. The fact that he barely had time to get to the cemetery and give Vyeta the information before Ros _kindly_ stun gunned him told him more than he suspected MI-5 wanted him to know about his current surveillance situation.

The downside of carefully staging his flat, of course, was that he came home to a disaster. He hadn’t had a chance to clean up. Everything had happened so quickly - being brought back to the Grid, getting the codes from Kachimov, and then turning Elizabeta, he simply hadn’t had time to come home and clean up. The only difference between when he had left earlier in the afternoon and now was that someone had kicked a path inside. His frown deepened. Ros? No, unlikely. Unless Ros was trying to hide the fact that Lucas was under surveillance? More likely. He didn’t think Harry would be pleased to give Lucas an idea of just how much surveillance he was under and he may have ordered Ros to make the search look less… targeted.

Still, the uneasy feeling didn’t dissipate. Ros didn’t strike him as the type to take the time to kick a few things around when there was an imminent terrorist attack impending, not even to keep the surveillance secret. No, someone had come into his flat, presumably _after_ Ros had left. _Surely_ MI-5 would have warned him if someone unsavoury was in his flat, though? _Because Harry has an excellent track record of warning me about rather unfortunate things_ , he thought bitterly. _Fuck it_. He felt like a tit, standing in the hall. At the very least, if someone _was_ in his flat, the surveillance would pick up on _who_ and hopefully Harry would deign to do something this time _before_ Lucas found himself shipped back to Russia. _Hopefully_.

Taking a steadying breath, Lucas stepped back into his flat and shut his door behind him. Without looking away from down the hall, Lucas leaned over to pull the knife he’d stashed in the hall table out. He slowly squatted down and silently put the vodka on the floor. As he straightened, Lucas switched his grip on the knife and carefully made his way into the flat, stepping over various books and clothing articles.

He wasn’t sure what he expected to see, but Gemma Wright, sitting on his couch, was definitely not it. Gemma had been the section chief when Lucas had first signed on. He’d argue she was probably one of the best things that happened to the section, even if the director general at the time never thought so. _Then again, Albert was a pompous, arrogant, racist, asshole._ Albert West never thought a black, lesbian woman could run a section. Gemma not only proved him wrong, but Lucas was fairly certain she enjoyed it the entire time.

Gemma had done a lot for him, back when he was first recruited. She… had been there for him during a time when he didn’t have a whole lot else. While she had questioned Harry’s decision to offer Lucas a job – and made no secret that she had questioned him on it – she had also taught Lucas a lot. It had been Gemma that taught Lucas to let the bosses underestimate him, let them think he couldn’t do the job, and, when the time was right, prove them wrong. While Harry had done his best to mentor Lucas and teach him the ropes, there was only so much he could do without being accused of blatant favouritism. Gemma had picked up the slack.

Even after Gemma had gotten a promotion to Section Head of Section B, Lucas had kept in touch with her. He wasn’t under any illusion – Gemma was the one that had gotten him the promotion to section chief. Lucas hadn’t applied for it and there’s no way that Albert would have agreed to promote Lucas unless he was strong-armed into it. No, Lucas’ promotion was all Gemma. In that first month, he frequently had gone to her for advice. Sometimes, she’d even give him advice. It’d been eight years since he last saw her. _Christ, that long?_ She looked good, though. Tired, like the weight of the job was starting to catch up to her, but otherwise good.

Lucas owed a lot to Gemma. He also didn’t trust her sudden appearance in his flat.

“Hello, Lucas,” Gemma said. Only Gemma would break into his flat and look like she owned the place from a couch with a pile of books seated next to her. She looked calm, collected. Her hands were folded in her lap, under her purse.

“Gemma,” Lucas said, nodding his head at her.

Her dark brown eyes flicked to the knife in his hand. “I hope you aren’t planning on using that.”

“Because you’re completely unarmed,” Lucas said, lifting an eyebrow. He waggled the knife in his hand. “You’ve seen mine, don’t suppose you’ll show me yours?”

Gemma smiled and drew her hands from her lap, revealing the gun she had hidden beneath her purse. Lucas nodded his head. He made a show of slowly putting the knife down on the floor and nudging it away with his foot. It skittered to a stop when it connected loudly with one of the plastic bins. He didn’t look at it, instead holding Gemma’s gaze. What his old section chief was doing in his flat was a mystery, but Lucas wouldn’t find out if he ran her through with a knife. _If I even get to her before she shoots me._ Gemma had been the one to teach Lucas how to shoot and to force him to familiarize himself with a gun. She was a far better marksman than he was. Lucas rather doubted that his knife was much of a threat to her.

“You look well,” he said as he shrugged off his jacket and tossed it over one of the many bins strewn across the floor. He’d put it away _properly_ when he wasn’t busy trying to figure out what Gemma’s sudden appearance in his flat meant. Leaning against the doorjamb, Lucas asked, “Still running Section B?”

“I am,” she said, nodding once as she set her gun aside. “I love what you’ve done with the place.”

Lucas snorted. “Yeah. You know me. Interior decorator extraordinaire.”

“I hope you don’t mind that I let myself in. I had to clear a path to the couch, I’m afraid.”

He gave Gemma a brittle smile. Lucas supposed that explained why so much of his stuff was out of place. “Not at all,” Lucas lied. Part of the appeal of having his own flat instead of living in a safe house was that he could control who came in and out of his flat. He’d had enough of unwelcome visitors in the past eight years. He wasn’t eager to establish a trend of past and current colleagues breaking into his flat.

Gemma looked around the room. When she looked back at him, she lifted an eyebrow. Lucas tilted his head, answering her unspoken question. He knew he was being watched. He knew where the bugs were. And he knew that Gemma wasn’t here for a social call.

“I’m sorry,” Gemma said after a minute. Lucas looked away. “I heard what happened.”

“Yeah,” Lucas said. He swallowed hard and crossed his arms over his chest, suddenly thankful that, after he had spoken with Elizabeta, he had the foresight to roll his sleeves down again. “So,” Lucas said, desperate to change the topic, “how’s your wife?”

“Good,” Gemma said. She gave Lucas a sympathetic look and Lucas internally cringed. Even fucking Gemma Wright knew about Elizabeta. _Guess I’m the last one to find out my wife is now my ex-wife._ “Jackie says hello.”

“Say hi back for me, would you?” Lucas asked as he pushed off the doorjamb. He made his way into the kitchen and silently made coffee for the both of them. Lucas had a feeling that whatever conversation Gemma wanted to have, he was going to need to have a lot more caffeine to deal with it. _Vodka’d be better_.

When the coffee was done, Lucas brought both mugs over and handed one to Gemma wordlessly. She lifted the mug towards him in thanks before taking a sip. Lucas perched precariously on the arm of the chair opposite the couch. The seat was currently occupied by another plastic bin that he could move, but, perching meant he was closer to the knife that was now just within reach, if he needed it. They drank their coffee in silence, each sizing the other up. He noted, wryly, that each of their weapons were close at hand. _I’m not the only one feeling a touch distrustful._

“I’m assuming by the… interior decorating that you’re back at work, now?” Gemma asked after she glanced around the room again.

Lucas shrugged. “I said please.”

Gemma smiled. As they lulled into easy silence, Gemma’s smile faded. She took another sip of her coffee before looking back up at Lucas. “You’re going to look into Polecat.” It wasn’t a question. _She knows me too well._

He nodded his head once. “I need to know,” he said. And he did. God, he needed to know who sold him out. Lucas didn’t want to believe the FSB. He didn’t want to think that Tom or Danny or Zoe or Malcolm or even Harry fucking Pearce had been the one to betray him. But someone had. Someone had given the FSB his name, his safe house, had given them everything they’d need to find him and capture him. _Someone burned me. Someone’s responsible for everything I went through_.

She sighed. “Lucas, listen to me. Whatever you think happened back then… Harry and I investigated on our end.” Lucas lifted an eyebrow at her. Gemma had helped Harry look into it? “Harry asked for my opinion and I’m going to tell you the same thing I told him. You did everything right. Sometimes even the best get caught.”

“The Russians said that someone burned me,” Lucas said casually, studying her face for her reaction. If she had one, if she knew something, Gemma didn’t let it show on her face.

“Maybe someone did,” Gemma said, “but Harry and I spent months going over Polecat and neither one of us found anything.”

“Then there’s nothing to lose if I give it a once over.”

Gemma fixed Lucas with a stern look that, once, would have had him fall into line. After eight years in prison, he found its effect… diluted. “Have you told Harry yet?”

“Told him what?” Lucas asked innocently.

She picked up her purse and pulled a MI-5 file from it, holding it aloft. “That you asked Tom to look into this?”

Lucas pursed his lips. He didn’t think that Tom would have been so sloppy as to leave a trail. It wasn’t that far of a stretch for Gemma to correctly assume he wanted answers, but for her to know that he’d gotten Tom involved? She’d have to have…. _Shit_.

“You were spying on me this morning,” Lucas said slowly.

Gemma tilted her head in acknowledgement. “Eight years and you’re as sharp as ever. Took you awhile to notice you were being watched, though.”

 _Damn it._ Still, it made him feel a little less like he was being paranoid earlier when he thought someone had been tailing him. “I suppose you’re going to chide me for asking a civilian to look into classified intel,” Lucas said, glancing down at the floor.

“No,” Gemma said. She placed the file in the plastic bin on the coffee table. “I’m going to let you come to the same conclusion that Harry and I came to.” She got up and slipped her purse over her shoulder. “I should go, let you clean up a bit, settle in. Take care, Lucas.”

He frowned and stared at the bin. She was just… giving him the file? Harry had only just reinstated Lucas today. It would take a week, at least, for them to get his clearance through the system. Until then, he had to make buddies with Ben to get onto the Grid or use a visitor’s pass until his file in the system was reopened and reactivated, and Gemma was just… giving him the file? Something wasn’t adding up. Lucas knew Gemma. She didn’t do things _just because_. Maybe she understood his need for closure. Maybe she was playing a deeper game. Either way, Lucas didn’t trust her motivations.

“Gemma,” he said as she started towards the hall. She paused and looked at him over her shoulder. “What aren’t you telling me?”

For a moment, they stared at each other, neither one saying anything. Finally, Gemma said, “Thanks for the coffee. Good luck with the cleaning. If you need anything, I’m sure you know Tom’s number.”

Lucas snorted, but didn’t stop her from leaving. As soon as the door shut behind her, Lucas locked the door behind her and looked back at the file. Something wasn’t adding up. There was something more to Gemma’s visit and Polecat was the centre of it, Lucas was sure of it. He just couldn’t figure out what.

Frustrated, Lucas pressed his hand to his mouth. If nothing else, he had more pieces of the puzzle, but he still wasn’t any closer to the answers he needed. Harry had gone to Gemma and… then what? They reviewed the file and thought that Lucas’ best just… wasn’t good enough? That the FSB somehow not only figured out the alias Lucas was using, but knew exactly where his safe house was, exactly what his real name was, and exactly what his position in MI-5 was? He had to have been burned. There was no other possible way for the FSB to have all that information.

 _Unless that’s what Gemma meant when she said they hadn’t found anything._ Lucas frowned. Gemma was cunning. There was a reason she was so successful as a section chief and, later, as a section head. Maybe she thought a fresh pair of eyes going over the file would reveal something. Maybe she thought that there really wasn’t anything to dig up. Maybe she really did want Lucas to come to the same conclusion that she and Harry had come to, that there was nothing to find in the file and that the FSB just somehow figured out who and what Lucas was. Lucas sighed noisily and glared at the file. If Gemma was leaving it with him, it meant Harry had signed off on it, which meant it was unlikely that Agatha would be rushing to notify MI-5 that he was looking into classified intelligence.

Of course, maybe he really was just paranoid and was overthinking things. Maybe Gemma left the file to give Lucas closure. Maybe she knew what Harry didn’t, that Lucas needed the proof that Harry wasn’t the one that betrayed him. Maybe she thought Lucas would read over the file and then just… move on. _Maybe I’m going to drive myself mental and look like a bloody tit if I keep standing here, staring at the bin._

Lucas growled and jerked his coffee mug down on the coffee table harder than strictly necessary. He was almost disappointed that the mug didn’t break. Instead, he scowled about the room and started methodically cleaning up and rearranging things. Books went back onto the bookshelves. Clothes were tossed on his bed to later be put away properly. CDs went onto their own shelf. Plastic bins were filled and then shoved into closets. He hesitated before putting the vodka in the cupboard over the fridge. As much as he wanted to drink away the empty feeling his actions today elicited, he’d rather look at Polecat with sober eyes.

Soon enough, order reigned once more in his flat. He surveyed his work before glancing at his watch. He probably should start thinking about making something to eat. Still, the fate of the fish and chips he’d had a few days ago reminded him that maybe what he should eat and what he could cook did not exactly overlap. He sighed again and ran a hand through his hair, once more wishing things were different, that he hadn’t… that things had been different.

He looked at the file that he had moved to the table. Lucas knew he should eat, or at least try to eat something that wasn’t coffee. As much as he’d rather not have another night spent in the loo, he also knew that, if he wanted to play normal for the cameras, he had to start working on eating regularly.

Then again, Polecat.

 _Fuck it._ Lucas moved towards the table and got to work.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you, as always, to Zen for beta reading <3


	8. Chapter 8

“You can only trust your family,” Marlin said. _Clearly, he’s never met my father_ , Ros thought with a pang of pain. Once, she would have agreed with Marlin wholeheartedly. Now… Well, she was here, free, and her father wasn’t and Harry Pearce was partly to blame. She still hadn’t been to see her father since hearing the news that Harry had failed to keep his promise to grant her father leniency. _If I hadn’t forced him to stand down…_ If she hadn’t, then hundreds of innocent British citizens would have been killed for her father’s coup. She agreed, the British government _had_ to start putting British interests first, but killing innocents to achieve that goal? That was too far.

“Oh, I wouldn’t be so sure of that, actually,” Lucas was saying. It chilled her to the core to hear him say that and she hoped, fervently, he wasn’t thinking of MI-5. She still didn’t trust him and his little con with Kachimov, while admittedly brilliant, hadn’t convinced her of his loyalty the way it had Harry. If Lucas didn’t trust MI-5, if he really was a mole, surely he wasn’t stupid enough to try to use it to bond with an asset? _I’ll have to keep an eye on him._ Harry certainly wouldn’t, after all. All it took was Lucas handing Kachimov on a silver platter to MI-5 and Harry sped Lucas through the debriefing process and got him access to the Grid again. He didn’t hear a word of caution and he certainly hadn’t listened when Ros had explained her reservations. _It’s Ruth all over again_.

“Excellent. No faith in human nature at all,” Marlin said. “Man after my own heart.”

Ros didn’t like the connotations of that. _Hopefully not too much, else Lucas may very well be the traitor he claims he’s not._ Still, she let Lucas direct the conversation. She wasn’t giving him Marlin out of the kindness of her heart, after all. She needed to see how he handled assets. After Kachimov, she had made a point of reading and then rereading Lucas’ file. He had held her position before her – which, she thought, explained how he had pulled off the con that most other spies would have struggled to pull off even _with_ Grid support – which meant that he had gone from a nuisance that she had to deal with to a threat she would have to watch carefully. Ros did not like being blindsided and Harry was useless at telling her what Lucas was capable of, beyond that he had been one of the best field officers back in his day. She wanted to see what Lucas was capable of so that she could be prepared for the eventuality that he may very well be attempting to pull off a quadruple agent con. In the best case scenario, she thought, Lucas would crack under the pressure of the job and Harry would be forced to put him on leave. And, if Harry refused to put Lucas on leave, then Ros would simply go over his head. She wasn’t about to let the Grid suffer, again, because Harry refused to see what was plainly in front of him.

“The way things are in Pakistan at the moment, I imagine you have to watch your back,” Lucas said as he stepped forward. Ros recognized the move for what it was. It looked friendly enough to an untrained eye, but she wasn’t a fool. She recognized intimidation tactics when she saw them.

“Things are certainly… interesting.” _Apparently, Marlin is also aware of intimidation tactics when he sees them._

“Are things going to get interesting for us?” Lucas asked.

“I gave you Nadif Abdelrashid. He’s a big fish, Al-Qaeda’s new European coordinator.”

“We’re on Nadif,” Ros said, cutting in. As much as she was content to let Lucas demonstrate if he could _actually_ handle an asset, she didn’t have the patience to play cat-and-mouse with Marlin. _Give us something useful._ “What else can you tell us?”

“It will start with a waterfall.”

“A waterfall?” Lucas asked, frowning slightly.

Marlin seemed to think for a moment. “An explosion of internet chatter. Threats of every type, noise. And, right after the noise comes the dry run, which Nadif will mastermind.”

“Okay, noise, dry run…?” Ros said. She was starting to feel the early December chill and shifted slightly to angle her face away from the wind.

“Bring in a second team for the real thing and,” Marlin snapped his fingers, “boom. You’ve dealt them some blows, so now they’ve got to get nasty. Civilian casualties of course, but also… something that undermines confidence. Banks going under, homes repossessed. People are frightened.” Marlin looked at Lucas. “Stay on Nadif, my friend. He’s the key to everything.”

“Thanks for your assistance,” Lucas said, politely offering his hand.

Marlin stared at Lucas for a moment longer before taking his hand. “Indeed, my friend. Good luck.”

\--

“Sugarhorse,” Lucas said, not moving from where he was hunched over in his seat. The memories were so _vivid_ and it took everything he had not to bolt out of Harry’s office and drink himself into a stupor so that the memories couldn’t follow. He could still hear Volkova’s voice asking what Sugarhorse was, to tell her about Sugarhorse, could still smell the smoke of her cigarette, could still feel the panic at the feeling of water slapping against his face, choking him. _No, don’t go there, don’t go there, don’t let the memories take over_. He couldn’t slip up, not here, not in front of Harry.

Harry glanced up at him, oblivious to Lucas’ internal struggle. “Sugarhorse?” he repeated. He looked as confused as Lucas felt. “Is that it?”

“That’s what she said. Tell me about Sugarhorse.” Lucas watched Harry look away. He tried to read the other man, tried to get a feel if Harry knew anything about Sugarhorse. Harry’s face gave nothing away, so Lucas prodded, “What is it?”

“No idea,” Harry said, with a small shake of his head. “Curveball? Control question, maybe? Nonsense probably.”

Lucas looked down, feeling… not quite stupid, but definitely overly paranoid now. Maybe it had been nothing. Maybe he was just tense and fixating on something that was actually inconsequential. _And maybe the Al-Qaeda isn’t actually out there preparing to bomb the hell out of London._ Whatever Sugarhorse was, Volkova had been… persistent in her attempts to extract information about it. Maybe it was a control question, but it struck him as odd that the Russians would spend so much time and effort interrogating him over a control question. “Well, it seemed pretty important to the interrogator at the time,” he said, needing to justify both to himself and to Harry why he had brought the matter forward.

“Yes, I’m sure it did,” Harry said.

 _Don’t fucking patronize me_ , he found himself thinking, feeling a flash of anger rush through him. This conversation was going nowhere. He forced himself to take a deep breath and calm down before quietly saying, “I’d thought you’d want to know.”

“Thank you.” He heard the dismissal in Harry’s voice and felt foolish, once again.

“Probably not the best time,” Lucas said, trying to lighten the mood as he got up to leave.

“When troubles come.”

Lucas made it to the door before he paused and turned to face Harry again. He couldn’t put his finger on it, but his gut was telling him there was something Harry was keeping from him. “If it did mean something… I’d hate to think I went through all that…”

Harry nodded, not looking at him. Lucas had grown used to that, though. He hadn’t failed to notice the way that whenever something involving Lucas’ time in prison came up, Harry couldn’t look at him. Guilt, maybe? _Or shame?_ Still, as used to it as he was, it didn’t stop him from wanting to scream in frustration. Once, he and Harry had been close. He’d looked up to Harry when Harry had first recruited him. For the first time in Lucas’ life, he’d _wanted_ to impress someone, and it _hurt_ seeing the way Harry looked at him now. _Like he really did leave me in prison all those years_.

“Absolutely,” Harry said, drawing Lucas from his thoughts.

Lucas paused for a moment longer, studying the older spy. When he couldn’t glean anything, he left. He didn’t particularly feel like going home, but staying on the Grid meant having to face the fact that he had more than likely overreacted over a control question. Maybe Volkova only insisted on Sugarhorse to throw him off. Maybe it really was nonsense. _And maybe Russian prison really was a goddamn holiday camp._

In the quiet of the Grid, Lucas sighed noisily. Everyone else had gone home for the night. He should probably follow suit. The dry run was tomorrow and Ben would need him to back him up. With a final glance at Harry’s office, Lucas shoved his hands into his pockets and resolutely made his way back outside, trying very hard not to focus on the uncomfortable feeling of the rain falling over his head.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As always, thank you to Zen for beta reading this!


	9. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It occurred to me just after I published this that I should probably mention here that this chapter does refer to Marlin's suicide at the end of 7x03. I don't really go into detail, but for those that need the warning, this chapter does deal with the fallout of that particular scene.

Lucas splashed water on his face, grimacing. The image of Marlin holding the gun had seared itself into Lucas’ memory, as had his own reaction. Stunned, unmoving. He hadn’t reacted. Not with fear, not with boldness, not even with indecision. He had been… still. Numb. Not exactly accepting – Lucas didn’t want to die, not anymore, not now that he was home – but not exactly running, either. Marlin wouldn’t have set up the meet if he was going to kill Lucas, of that he was sure. And yet, when Marlin had pulled out the gun, Lucas froze. It was hardly the first time someone had pointed a gun at him. Hell, he faced death regularly when he was... enjoying Russian hospitality. But he did _not_ survive Russia to be killed by a bloody asset that had played both him and MI-5.

He splashed more water on his face, watching as the droplets, stained red with Marlin’s blood, fell back into the sink. _Christ_. Harry would throw a fit if he knew that Lucas hadn’t reacted to the gun, would question if Lucas really was fit for duty, and would probably insist that Lucas start seeing that annoying shrink more regularly. And, really, Lucas couldn’t blame Harry. How could he? He should have noticed the damn gun. He was a bloody spy, had built his reputation on being bloody well observant. Being observant was how he got the damn job in the first place and it was what had made him stand out from the other spies. So why hadn’t he noticed the gun? Why hadn’t he considered that Mr. Big, whoever he was, had gotten to Marlin’s family, that Marlin would kill himself to protect his family? He had admitted as much when they had first met. And, yet, Lucas never put the pieces together. He never noticed the gun. He picked up that there was something Marlin wasn’t telling him, but he hadn’t once thought that Marlin was their Mr. Big.

Lucas glared into the mirror. There was still some blood on his face, giving him a fiercer look than he intended. He could still remember seeing Harry tell Connie and Adam that he thought Lucas was damaged. Harry didn’t know that Lucas had read their lips and put one and two together. _Maybe Harry was right_. Maybe Lucas should have taken time after getting back. Maybe he should have gone through the debriefing process. _And what good would that have done?_ Being left alone with his thoughts, day in, day out, wasn’t an experience Lucas was eager to repeat any time soon. No, he would rather be here, on the Grid. But he had to prove himself, had to show he _wasn’t_ damaged, that he was still _him_ and still good at what he did, and missing the gun certainly wasn’t the way to do it.

Aggressively swiping at the blood, he finished cleaning up. _Best not to scare the locals_. Not that an officer coming back to the Grid in blood was entirely uncommon. Not common. But not uncommon, either. Shrugging on a spare shirt, Lucas slipped out of the gents’ and made his way to his desk. He wasn’t entirely surprised to see Ros at her own desk. She struck him as the type to work long hours, much longer than Harry would approve of. Not that Lucas could throw stones. He hadn’t been – and still wasn’t – much better.

“Hey,” he said as he walked to his desk and checked his phone. He wasn’t sure what he had been hoping to see. Maybe a text from Vyeta – _we’re done, we’re over_. He’d made his decision, whether he liked it or not. But telling himself that and telling his heart that were two separate things, he found.

Ros glanced over at him. “Hey yourself.”

Neither of them said anything for a moment, which suited Lucas just fine. Every word he said, every move he made, was being assessed. And, if there was one thing that he had noticed during this clusterfuck of an operation, it was that Ros had been assessing him. Lucas always had been rubbish at doing well on tests, albeit those were more conscious decisions on his part than anything else. Not like this operation. Not the way he had botched it. He wondered if he had rather spectacularly lived up to Ros’ low expectations of him or if she was now even more convinced that he shouldn’t be on the Grid.

“I heard you gave the politicians both barrels earlier,” he said, finally, wanting to break the silence before Ros could conclude her examination of him.

“When it comes to politicians, my only regret is only having the two to give them,” she quipped.

He smiled as he shrugged on his coat. He didn’t exactly want to go home, but he didn’t feel like being scrutinized _either_. At least at home, he could pretend he had some privacy. “You were right though. We have nothing to reproach ourselves for,” he said, watching her from the corner of his eye.

“Yeah, we do.” Lucas glanced up at Ros. She wasn’t the only one capable of needling, assessing. “Bastards got one past us. Ever since I was a little girl, I’ve always been annoyingly competitive and perfectionist and that really annoys me.”

He couldn’t help himself. “I bet that really annoys your friends as well.”

“What did you say to Marlin about friends?” He looked over at her, surprised that she recalled an offhand comment he had made to build trust. “Overrated, I think it was. Not a big one for dinner parties, myself.”

He shifted towards her. “Colleagues, then?”

“Yeah. Lovers leave, friends annoy you, families mess with your head. Colleagues are okay.”

His eyebrows lifted as he feigned a friendly half-smile. “Ah, but are they to be trusted?”

“Yes, they are.”

“All of them?” Lucas asked, not changing his expression.

“All of them,” Ros said, a note of steel entering her words.

He found it ironic, Ros saying that, given her past. “Even the most senior?”

Ros’ tilt of the head, the brief confusion on her face, spoke more than he was sure she meant to let on. “Particularly him,” she said, nodding once. “Harry sweated blood to get you back here. He’d rather die than ever let anything happen to you.”

Lucas broke eye contact as she spoke. He wasn’t sure he wanted Ros to see the fear that Ros was _wrong_ nor did he want her to see the anger that it took eight years for Harry to decide to sweat a bit of blood to get him back. It didn’t help that it wasn’t through Harry’s own doing that Lucas was back in England now. _Maybe I’m more transparent than I think._ The thought frightened him. Lucas had always prided himself on being able to keep a certain distance, to be able to keep how he was feeling and his thoughts inside, where no one could see them. He had to be good at it, otherwise he would never have survived prison – although, he would admit that there were times, late at night when the nightmares came, he questioned just how much of him had survived. But Ros saw through the needling. She saw through his question, originally intended to see if Ros still felt loyalty to Yalta, to see if her loyalty really was as elastic as her past suggested, and saw it for what it was – Lucas tacitly admitting to questioning Harry.

_Shit._

The silence was dragging on too long. “Yeah,” he said finally. He forced himself to look up, to give Ros a smile. “Colleagues are okay.”

He retreated before Ros could form a retort. Lucas rather doubted that she had believed that he accepted her defence of Harry. He needed space, needed to clear his head, to focus, to remind himself what was at stake, and that he had to be more careful. He already knew Ros was good. It was foolish of him to think she would fall for thinking that he was talking about her betraying Harry for Yalta.

Instead of heading for the pods, Lucas found himself going to the roof. He wasn’t sure he wanted to head back to his flat, not yet, not when he knew the nightmares that waited for him when he inevitably tried to sleep. No, right now, he wanted to prolong going back to his flat as long as he could. It was easier to pretend, on the roof, that his life was normal again, that he hadn’t truly lost everything, even Harry’s trust, when he was detained eight years ago. Going back to his flat carried the heavy knowledge that it was bugged, that his every move, every word was being recorded and analyzed. If he did anything suspicious, even if it was buy a different brand of coffee, it was suspect and reported to Harry. At least the roof didn’t make him feel like he was naked and exposed to anyone who wanted to take a look at the feed.

 _I’ll have to text Tom and see if he’s up for a bit of… fishing_. Lucas didn’t mind the surveillance, but he was _mighty_ curious about just how much surveillance he was under.

The door shut behind him and Lucas gripped the edge of the building, staring out at the city. Winter was approaching, the air chilly and unforgiving, and the clouds threatened snow. Down on the ground, life continued as if nothing had happened. Cars continued to rush along the road. Horns blared. Pedestrians crowded the sidewalks. It was like the city hadn’t noticed the bomb go off earlier. He inhaled deeply, closed his eyes, and just listened. _Home_. He hadn’t thought he’d get to see it again and, now that he was back, he felt like he was floundering. Everything was the same, but so different at the same time.

Taking another deep breath, Lucas opened his eyes and tugged out the pack of cigarettes he kept in his back pocket. He wasn’t a regular smoker, hardly even a smoker, really, if he was honest with himself. It was just something familiar to him, something grounding. He had smoked before joining MI-5, and then had quit after he joined, only to pick it up again in prison, before quitting again while still in prison. This was probably the third or fourth cigarette he’d had since coming home.

 _Home_. He was home. But some small voice asked bitterly if he really was home or if he had traded one prison for another. He flicked the lighter and inhaled deeply, feeling the odd comfort of nicotine enter his lungs. Lucas wasn’t stupid. He knew that Harry had him under constant surveillance and that everything he did was being watched, assessed, just like it had been in prison.

If Lucas was honest with himself, he was home, but home didn’t feel an awful lot like home.

The door opened behind him and Lucas turned his head to see who had disrupted his thoughts. Apparently, he was not the only one that sought refuge on the roof. Ros either had followed him up, or had similar thoughts, that she wasn’t ready to go home and that she needed the space to think. She was scowling, but as soon as she saw him watching, the scowl disappeared to be replaced with blank neutrality. He knew the trick well, as it was one that he was employing himself, and had employed more times than he cared to admit to in the past eight years. Better blank neutrality than admitting that their conversation had unsettled him.

“I didn’t know you smoked,” Ros said coolly, even as her fingers deftly removed a cigarette from her own pack. Lucas noted and filed away that her cigarettes were _slightly_ more expensive than his.

He offered her his lighter. “I don’t.”

“I don’t either,” she said as she took the lighter. She lit her cigarette before wordlessly handing the lighter back.

He turned back towards the city, lost in his thoughts once more. Ros left him to his thoughts, smoking in silence beside him. Lucas knew that she didn’t trust him and that she definitely did not approve of Harry giving Lucas clearance to be on the Grid. Lucas thought it was awfully ironic, given her history. Not that he’d ever tell her that. No, Lucas was intimately acquainted with the power of knowledge and he had no intention of tipping his hand yet. Besides, if Ros hadn’t figured out that he had done his homework on his new colleagues, than she certainly didn’t deserve to be Section Chief.

Ros was good, though. If Lucas had to be replaced, he was glad it was Ros and not Ben or Jo. Ben and Jo seemed… too green to do the job. Hell, this had been Ben’s first undercover operation. Lucas would have walked off the Grid if Harry had given Section D to Ben. But he could appreciate the need to promote someone already in Section D. With the loss of Adam, promoting someone already in Section D instead of bringing in someone new seemed the wiser decision. At least Ros was competent and wasn’t one to back down easily, both traits that would help her get far as Section Chief. He would cut out his own tongue before he admitted to her that he didn’t blame her for being suspicious of him. Had their positions been reversed, he’d have been suspicious too. Her being suspicious of him meant that she was good, which meant that he had to be careful not to slip up again in front of her.

“You handled yourself well,” he said. Because she had and, if he was right about the source of her scowl, she could use someone telling her she did a good job. She looked up at him, one fine, blonde eyebrow arched. Whenever she had caught him watching her in briefings, Lucas had always looked away. This time, he didn’t. “Earlier,” he continued. “We had faulty intelligence and what we thought was a dry run turned out to be the real deal. You handled it well.”

“Naturally,” she said. _Maybe she didn’t need someone to tell her that she did a good job then._

“No false modesty?” Lucas asked, catching himself just in time to stop a smile from breaking through.

“Never was a strong suit of mine.” She paused, and Lucas had the feeling that he was being appraised once again. “Earlier, you said we had nothing to reproach ourselves for. Why do you think that?”

 _Clever_. Ros was too good to openly admit that she knew he had been Section Chief, that she knew he had been testing her, and that she knew he was more bothered by the fact that the bastards had gotten one past them than he was letting on. It would seem, Lucas thought, that he was not the only one acquainted with the power of knowledge and the importance of keeping one’s hand close to the chest.

“We had faulty intelligence and our man on the inside was on his first undercover operation. Harry was MIA, I was blown, and we had scant seconds to clear the blast radius. All things considered, three dead C019 officers is a win.” It was a lie, but one Lucas said easily. He couldn’t quite get Elizabeta’s voice, accusing him of becoming cold, out of his head. _Maybe all of me didn’t make it out of prison._

Ros scrutinized him and Lucas wondered if he had passed her test. Truthfully, Lucas was as pissed as she was that the bastards had gotten a bomb off. He should have seen through Marlin, should have picked up that things were too easy, too neat. In his experience, cells were rarely that neat, and Mr. Bigs were rarely that easy to catch. But Lucas couldn’t bring himself to admit that he was pissed, lest Ros start looking too hard and realize what Lucas already knew, that he should have figured out what was going on and who the real Mr. Big was before the C019 officers were in a position where they had to choose between sacrificing themselves and civilian casualties. _And I should have noticed the damn gun_.

 _Were you always this cold? Under the skin? Or is that man I knew just a lie_? The words rang bitterly in his head.

Finally, Ros nodded once. “They got one past us. They won’t a second time.”

“Suicide bombers usually don’t,” Lucas quipped, unable to stop himself. Ros glared at him and he gave her a cheeky grin. She didn’t deign him with a reply, but whether that was because she didn’t want to let on that she found his comment amusing or because she simply didn’t think his comment warranted a reply, Lucas wasn’t sure.

They lulled into silence. Lucas had almost finished his cigarette when Ros said, “I’m not going to apologize.”

Lucas tensed, figuring out quickly enough what she was referring to. It was fresh enough in his memory that it didn’t take much to dreg it up. He remembered her walking up to him and the stun gun stinging into his shoulder. He remembered waking up to memories of electricity burning through him, pulling screams from him, even as he tried in vain to hold them back. All he could think of, when he came to, was Oleg pulling him upright when he slumped over gasping for air and checking if he was able to handle another round before pouring water over Lucas’ head so that they could continue. It had taken everything Lucas had not to vomit when he came to. He swallowed back bile and sternly told himself that he didn’t throw up then, he wasn’t about to throw up now, and he certainly was not going to vomit in front of Ros Myers.

Ros couldn’t have known what he had gone through in prison. She _couldn’t_. She was just stating that she wasn’t going to apologize for taking him down with minimal injury to either of them. Hell, he would have told any female officer attempting to take down a target larger and stronger than her the same way that Ros had taken him down. Lucas forced himself to relax and give her a half-hearted shrug, not trusting himself to say anything without his voice betraying him.

He could feel the weight of her scrutinizing stare again. Lucas didn’t give her anything. He forced his features to be neutral, forced his muscles to relax, even though all he wanted to do was flee. It wasn’t hard to do. He had done it often enough in the past eight years that keeping his face neutral had become almost like a second nature. He certainly wasn’t about to let Ros, of all people, see how unsettled he was at the mere mention of her stun gunning him.

“I _am_ sorry about your ex-wife,” Ros said after another moment when he offered her no reaction.

A rush of anger, mixed with the all too familiar pang of longing, surged through him at the mention of Vyeta. God, he had missed her, so much more than he wanted to admit to. _Fuck you, Ros_. Lucas knew what she was doing. Needling him, seeing if he was too in love with his ex-wife to effectively use her as an asset, trying to see what would make him tick. Assessing. Weighing. Looking for weak spots in the armour.

_If Kachimov and Oleg couldn’t do it after eight years,_ **_you_ ** _certainly can’t._

He did the same thing he had done in prison whenever his interrogators mentioned his ex-wife: he kept his face, his tone, even his body language neutral. Maybe Ros would see through it, maybe she wouldn’t. But he would be damned if he gave anything away that she could use against him later. “Yeah,” he said calmly, adding just enough sadness in it that it would seem plausible, but not enough to reveal the depth of how much he grieved for what he had lost.

Ros studied him, not even bothering to hide it this time. He watched her eyes study his face, study the way he leaned against the railing, the way he stared at her calmly. “Alright then,” she said briskly, evidently coming to whatever conclusion she had about his mental state. “I’m certain Harry will want to speak with you soon.”

“Yeah.” _Fucking Marlin shooting himself._ “I’ll be down shortly.”

“Alright,” Ros said.

Lucas stared back out at the city, listening to Ros return inside. As he heard the door swing shut, he closed his eyes against the city again and let the anger, the pain, the longing, everything wash over him. If he went downstairs as wired as he was, Harry would see the cracks and Lucas would lose everything he had worked hard to gain. He couldn’t afford that. He _couldn’t_.

A darker thought wormed its way into his head. He couldn’t lose Harry’s trust, not now, not when he needed to know the truth. Lucas had spent years telling himself Kachimov was wrong, that Harry hadn’t abandoned him, but everything Lucas had gleaned from Harry suggested the opposite. It wasn’t such a far stretch that…

 _No_. _Harry wouldn’t have_. Ros was right. _Was she?_ Would he, though? And, if he _had_ , why had Harry horse-traded to get Lucas back? What if Ros was wrong? What if this was all some sort of elaborate scheme? _Why did it take Harry so long to get me back?_

 _Traded one prison for another_ , he thought again, bitterly. Lucas opened his eyes and stared hard at the city. _At least this prison had better scenery._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As usual, thank you thank you thank you to Zen for beta'ing this! For those of you who may follow me on tumblr, you may recognize this chapter as a reworked drabble that I wrote some time ago. So if it looks familiar to you, that's probably why. :)


	10. Chapter 10

Using his bicep as a pillow, Lucas stared hard at the wall. He tapped his shoulder with his hand, trying to ground himself with each beat. It was a habit he had formed in prison, during the long periods of solitary confinement. With nothing but four, empty walls to entertain him and a flickering light that was sometimes on, sometimes off, and irregular meals, Lucas had quickly lost track of time and space. He didn’t know how long he spent alone with nothing but his thoughts and his imagination to keep him company. During the worst of the days, he had started tapping on his arm, his shoulder, his thigh, any part of him to reassure himself that he still existed, that he wasn’t just some ghost that was long forgotten.

It had been comforting then, and it was reassuring now. So he kept tapping against his shoulder, grounding himself a little more with each beat because the alternative was to let the darkness of the night consume him. Eight years of darkness. Vyeta wasn’t wrong. He had given MI-5 eight years of his life. Eight years of torture, eight years of darkness, and what had MI-5 given him in return? _Nothing but a flat filled with goddamn bugs_.

As he rolled onto his back and rested his forearm across his forehead, Lucas thought he really shouldn’t be all that surprised that Harry had bugged the flat. Harry had made it no secret that he thought Lucas should go through the debriefing process and that Lucas couldn’t be trusted. Hell, Ros thought he shouldn’t even be on the Grid, much less be free to roam about as he pleased. He supposed he should be grateful that he at least had some degree of freedom, even if it was monitored closely. _Which I definitely don’t know about_. It wasn’t as though Harry’s chosen voyeur was particularly subtle. If Lucas had been green, maybe he would have failed to pick up on who – and what – she was. Instead, he saw through the ruse quickly enough. He wondered if Harry even knew that his operative was blown.

 _If he does, he probably doesn’t care_ , Lucas thought bitterly. The bugs were a double-edged sword, he thought. They provided him with some level of security, especially after Moscow, but they also _reminded_ him of Moscow. He had never _truly_ been alone in prison. Someone had always been watching the cameras. Just like someone, likely Agatha up a few flights, was always watching him in his flat. Still, he wasn’t going to make it any easier for Harry to determine if Lucas knew about the bugs - and Agatha - or not. _Which means, unfortunately, no giving two-fingered salutes to the cameras_ , he thought with a wry smirk. Although, he rather doubted Harry would be much surprised by any crude gestures Lucas made towards the cameras.

Thoughts of Harry had Lucas’ smile fading away. He’d gone over the file Gemma had left with him several times now and still couldn’t find anything that suggested who might have sold him out. Polecat had been a joint operation with MI-6 to investigate the Russian mafia funding terrorism in London. While MI-6 obviously had some of the details, they weren’t given any information about Lucas, specifically, being in Moscow. Lucas and Harry had agreed that it’d be best to keep the fine details in house, just in case. The fewer people who knew that Lucas was in Moscow and attempting to get in with the Russian mafia, the better, not to mention the more likely the operation would be a success. Lucas’ counterpart in Six simply didn’t have the information _to_ burn him, which meant that the traitor had to be someone in Section D. It was an unnerving feeling, knowing that someone he had called a friend and had trusted with his life had been the one to sell him out to the FSB. _Hope they bloody paid well_.

Staring at the ceiling wasn’t making Lucas any sleepier, so he rolled over to his other side to stare at the door. He tried the pillow again, trying to force himself to get used to using it again. It was… too soft. He tried putting his arm under the pillow and felt his fingers brush against the cold steel of the knife he kept under his pillow. It was an empty gesture, he knew. More times than not, he’d be halfway between waking from a nightmare and full consciousness and he’d throw the knife at a hazy figure in his room, only to hear the knife thud into the wall. _Looks like Dad’s insistence that I help out repairing the house paid off_ , he thought every time he had to do minor wall repair, lest the super give him grief over gouges in the wall.

He didn’t know how long he glared at the door before the silence started to chip away at the carefully constructed wall he had built around his memories of prison. The silence was… too much. More than he could handle, right now. It was bad enough he wasn’t sleeping much; he certainly didn’t feel increasing the likelihood of hazy, memory-fuelled nightmares by trying to ignore the discomfiting silence.

Growling, Lucas slipped out of bed and padded out to the living room. The flat was dark, but that didn’t bother him, not anymore. Years in prison had gotten him used to the darkness. Sometimes the flickering light would be on, other times it would be off and he’d be left, quite literally, in the dark. Here, in London, even with the everything turned off, there was still enough light from the street outside to illuminate the flat just enough that he wouldn’t accidentally bump into anything. _Not that I would anyway_. He knew where his bloody furniture was.

Grabbing the remote, he turned on the telly and changed the channel to some late night news channel. It wasn’t much, but it broke up the monotony of the silence, even if the news did nothing but annoy him. Lucas stared at the telly for a moment as he ran his hand through his hair. Turning the volume down so that it would be just loud enough in his bedroom that he would be able to hear words being spoken, but not so loud that it would keep him awake, Lucas carefully put the remote back on the telly stand before making his way back to his bedroom.

He glared at his bed, but got back into it anyway. Even with the telly on, sleep eluded Lucas. The night dragged on. Every time Lucas closed his eyes, he was in Lushanka again. He could hear the electricity buzz, could feel the cold splash of water against his face as he choked, could feel the bindings holding him to the chair cut into his wrists as he thrashed. Every time Lucas thought he had finally fallen into the oblivion of sleep, a nightmare would startle him awake. After a particularly vicious one left him throwing the knife into the wall at the phantom image of Volkova, Lucas inhaled raggedly and decided sleep was something he would simply have to forgo for the night.

Which left him with not a whole lot to do for the next few hours. He couldn’t go to work this early. Harry would flay him alive if Lucas stepped foot on the Grid at this hour. He thought about going for a run, but when he heard the rain pattering against the windowpane, thought better of it. Once, he wouldn’t have been bothered by the rain. Now, with the memories of hell so close to the surface of his mind and the _last_ time it rained still fresh in his memory, he decided the rain might be more than he could handle right now.

Lucas forced himself to take several deep breaths. When he thought he could stand without shaking, Lucas got out of bed, pulled on a t-shirt, and made his way to the bathroom. He tried not to look at his reflection in the mirror. He needed to shave and he should probably wash up anyway. _At the very least, it’ll distract me for a bit_. He looked balefully at the tub. Lucas still wasn’t able to bring himself to try the shower again after the first disastrous attempt when he had first moved into the flat. Since then, he’d elected to wash himself using a glorified sponge bath, where he’d fill the tub partially full and carefully angle his head so that, when he washed his hair, the water would flow down the back of his head instead of over his face. It didn’t help much, but it was better than the alternative.

Just as Lucas started to run the water, he heard the unmistakable sound of the front door squealing open. _Fuck_.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey guys, been awhile! Sorry I've been lax in updating. I've been dealing with some personal stuff that's been impacting my desire to write. _Hopefully_ it'll all be sorted out soon and I'll be able to get some sort of regular uploading schedule soon!  <3 Thank you to everyone who's stuck with me through this mini hiatus and to everyone who has read, commented, given kudos, etc! And thank you to Zen, once again, for beta'ing this for me! <3
> 
> ***Edit: I can't believe I forgot to include this (bad SatanFish, bad!) BUT the Ros in this fic is heavily inspired by the lovely [Zen and her RP blog for Ros](http://www.rxsmyers.tumblr.com). This is done with permission from Zen. While I do not make my version of Ros identical to Zen's, it _is_ heavily inspired by Zen and her hcs about Ros. Check her out! She's great! :D ***This note has also been added to the first chapter so that credit is properly given.


	11. Chapter 11

In the early hours of the morning, far earlier than any normal person should be awake, Ros moved through the flat complex. It was still dark out, certainly early enough in the morning that most of the tenants were fast asleep. She hoped one in particular was sleeping, as it would make her job infinitely easier if he was. If not… well, she’d just have to improvise. Lucas’ conversation with Marlin had worried her and she wanted a better idea of what she was dealing with. She’d read over his file a few more times, but nothing in it really gave her any indication of what she could expect from Lucas. _Not to mention, it’s as if he didn’t exist before the age of twenty_ , she thought with a frown. Everything from before then was either redacted or requiring a higher security clearance than her own, which struck her as odd. _What are you hiding that you got_ ** _Harry_** _to sign off on redacting information and classifying the intel as LOCSEN?_

Ros pursed her lips. She supposed she could try asking Lucas, but she rather doubted he would give her much, not if Harry thought whatever was in Lucas’ past was worth hiding. It was doubtful that Harry would be exceptionally forthcoming, either, if his earlier actions were anything to go by. If Harry was willing to hide the fact that he had Lucas under surveillance _and_ that Lucas had _joked_ about agreeing to spy for Kachimov from her, Ros rather doubted Harry would tell her anything about Lucas’ past. In any case, Ros was a spook, and a good one at that. She didn’t _have_ to ask. She could simply break in, copy over his sim to make sure he wasn’t being a rotten apple and keeping in contact with people he shouldn’t be, and get his fingerprints to run, just to be safe. She tried hard not to think of the last time she acquired such items, and the catastrophic failure that had been.

 _Adam is dead. Move on._ She felt a surge of anger rush through her. Ros had spent six months in Moscow without contacting Adam once. As far as Adam was concerned, Ros had packed up and disappeared from London, never to be heard from again. She had even been the one to stipulate that condition to Harry: if Harry wanted her in Moscow, then he was _never_ to tell Adam that she was there. She could still remember the way Adam had looked at her when he had injected her with the adrenaline. He had held her, comforted her, and then he had told her that she had to leave and she could never look back. Ros hated that, for a brief moment, she had _wished_ , had even tacitly _asked_ , Adam to go with her. And it was for that reason that she _knew_ that Adam could never know she was still working for Harry. Because, if he knew, if he came to Moscow to be with her, she’d never be able to move on.

She had spent those six months mourning what she had lost, but knowing she had made the right decision. When she came home, all it took was hearing his damn name for her to know that he was about to do something _stupid_ and that he’d need her there to rescue him from his own stupidity. _And I was too late_. When she had seen him at the ceremony, some part of her wondered if maybe they could start anew, that maybe they could have a second chance and get it _right_ this time. And now, with Adam dead, she’d never know.

Angrily, Ros brushed away the tears that threatened to spill over her cheeks. She was _not_ about to start crying in front of Lucas North’s flat. Not over Adam. Not anymore. _Adam was right. There never is enough time, not for us_.

She took a deep breath and counted to ten before sliding the key into the lock and gingerly opening the door. What Ros had not counted on was the door _squealing_ as she pushed it open. She froze, the key still in her hand. The door had _not_ squealed the last time she had broken into Lucas’ flat, meaning that this was a new development. She found herself wondering if it was a… _natural_ development or if it had been helped along. Either way, she was going to bloody murder someone for not telling her that he had tampered with the door. Wasn’t this the whole point of having someone run surveillance on him? So that they could bloody well tell her when he starts doing suspicious things like making the hinges squeal loud enough that she was pretty certain her grandmother, may she rest in peace, could hear it all the way in her grave?

Despite the loud squeal, Ros could hear the shower start to run. The TV played in the living room. She released a breath that she hadn’t realized she had been holding. Lucas apparently was not asleep, but he was in the shower, then. The squeal hadn’t been loud enough to be heard over the shower or the TV. That was something, at least. Maybe it was for the best that he wasn’t asleep, as she had no doubt the startling screech of the hinges would have been enough to wake even the heaviest sleeper. Certainly loud enough to wake a man that spent the past eight years in a Russian hospitality suite. _Thank God for small mercies_.

Quietly pocketing the key, Ros stepped inside and turned to try to shut the door quietly. Even trying to move the door slowly so as to minimize the squeal, she still found herself wincing as the hinges screamed once more. Still, the sounds of the shower running filled the flat. She stared at the door, mentally counting to thirty, just to make sure that the shower didn’t shut off at the sound of the hinges.

“Sorry, haven’t had a chance to fix the door yet,” Lucas said amiably from behind her.

Ros Myers most certainly did _not_ start at the sound of his voice. She gracefully turned to face him, eyes narrowed. The shower was still running, but there was Lucas, in track pants and a dark t-shirt, and looking decidedly _not_ wet. He was leaning against the hallway wall, holding a knife loosely in one hand. For all intents and purposes, he almost looked like a shadow in the dark flat, his pale skin the only thing giving his location away.

It was the knife that drew Ros’ attention though. The blade glinted from the low reflection of the telly. While Ros was hardly afraid of a silly little knife – she had killed a man with a fork only a week ago, she was fairly certain that she could drop Lucas before he used that knife on her – it wasn’t a pleasant sight to see. How long had Lucas been standing there? He had moved so quietly that she hadn’t even heard his approach. And how had he gotten the knife out of the kitchen without her realizing he was not in the shower? _Unless that knife was never in the kitchen to begin with_.

She felt uneasy, but refused to let him see that. Instead, she gave Lucas’ flat a quick scan. She said, “You’ve cleaned up I see.” And he had. Even in the darkness of the flat, she could tell that it was significantly cleaner than when she had last visited it. No longer were there books, papers, and clothes scattered across the floor. Now, it was the picture of cleanliness. _Looks like someone really isn’t a mucky puppy after all_.

“Yeah, you know how moving is,” he said with a shrug. He moved and Ros tensed, but he simply smiled at her and put the knife down on the counter before flicking on the kitchen light. Ros squinted at the sudden brightness as her eyes adjusted to the light. “Phone’s on the table if you were looking to copy my sim card,” Lucas said matter-of-factly. Had Ros been anyone else, her face might have even heated up at Lucas’ casualness. As much as she was loath to admit it, he was good. Adam hadn’t caught on this fast, she was fairly certain. If he had, he certainly hadn’t been so… blasé as Lucas. “Sure you can find something around here with my fingerprints too, if you want those.”

When Harry had insisted that Ros accept Lucas on the team, she hadn’t initially understood. Certainly, maybe Lucas _was_ the best eight years ago. But she had thought that was _then_ and this was _now_. Not only had he been unable to extract the code from Tranquility, but he was fresh from Russian prison. There was no way that there wasn’t any damage, at the very least. And then he had openly admitted to agreeing to spy for Kachimov and, while even she was impressed that he pulled off that triple agent con with minimal assistance from the Grid, she wouldn’t have put it past him to be playing MI-5 still. She knew the value of sacrificing a pawn to save a more powerful piece. Lucas certainly wasn’t the king… but he was in a rather ideal position thanks to Harry refusing to take the rose-tinted goggles off. And after everything with Marlin….

Now, as Lucas leaned back against the counter and watched her, she had the sudden impression that maybe Lucas really was as good as Harry had claimed. He was right; she was here for his sim card and his fingerprints. But there was only one other person who had realized she was doing that when she tried it and that had been what felt like a lifetime ago. The fact that Lucas had caught on significantly faster than Adam had made her even more wary and aware of the fact that she was alone in the flat with him. Certainly, there were bugs throughout the flat and _surely_ Harry would have red flashed her if Lucas had tampered with the bugs? But, then again, Harry might not even realize that she was here if the bugs were tampered with. _What had Harry said?_ That Lucas had specialized in counter-surveillance? She had a feeling that Lucas knew how to work around a bug, and that feeling did nothing to ease her discomfort.

“As invigorating as our discussion has been, I think I’m going to shut my shower off now,” Lucas said and pushed off the counter. “Feel free to pillage my flat for something with my fingerprints.”

“I will, thank you,” Ros said stiffly as she watched Lucas slip back into the bathroom. Light spilled into the hallway as he turned the light on. A moment later, she heard the water shut off. As Lucas was turning the water off, Ros moved to the kitchen to pick up his discarded knife. It wasn’t that she thought Lucas would hurt her. _Surely_ he wasn’t that stupid. But, she didn’t like the idea of being unarmed, either. There was no hiding that she had taken the knife, though, so she didn’t bother to hide it. Instead, she moved to the table. True enough, as Lucas had said, the phone was on the table. She frowned. She could have sworn he had a different phone yesterday.

“I’m putting on a pot of coffee. Want some?” Lucas asked, re-emerging from the hallway.

“Got a new phone, did you?” Ros asked, putting the knife down on the table rather loudly. She was pleased to note that his eyes followed the movement of the knife before returning to her face. Although, she was disappointed that he didn’t react beyond to track the movement of the knife, but she supposed that would have been too easy.

Lucas smiled, but she noticed that it didn’t reach his eyes, which remained hard and unreadable. _He’s assessing me_ , she realized. It wasn’t much of a surprise to Ros. Nor was she particularly worried with what he thought of her. He would hardly be the first to undoubtedly underestimate her, and he would hardly be the last. If he wanted to be foolish enough to underestimate her, well, all the more fool him.

“I’ll take that as a yes,” he said and started going through the motions of preparing the coffee. She noticed wryly that he didn’t completely turn his back to her, instead angling himself so that he could still see her in his peripheral vision. To a casual observer, it wouldn’t look out of the ordinary, and that was what made her question if Lucas really was as… _average_ at spy craft as he seemed to be. An _average_ spook would have made the rookie mistake of either completely turning their back to her, an armed, potential opponent. A professional, or someone who was actually good at their job, would have done just as Lucas had. Or at least that’s what _she_ would have done.

“Just some milk, please,” Ros said frostily as she removed the sim card and went through the process of copying it. Lucas already knew she was here for the card – bloody hell, he had invited her to copy the card himself – so she didn’t bother hiding the fact that she was doing it. She determined that she would, however, have to keep an eye on what phone Lucas was using. She half wished he was still in the shower or, better yet, asleep so that she could search the flat and make _sure_ he didn’t have a second phone stashed away somewhere. As it was, she would simply have to make do. She made sure to note what type of phone this one was so that she would know, in the future, if he had a different phone that he was using.

With Lucas preoccupied and the sim card copied, Ros helped herself to a seat at the table. She took the opportunity to study Lucas, noticing the dark ink on his arms. She also noticed that his hair was decidedly not damp. _The shower had been a ruse_. He had heard her come in and he had turned the shower on to make her think that she had gotten in without his noticing. _Bastard_. _Or maybe he was about to take a shower when he heard the door._ Ros liked her version better. It was easier to be angry with Lucas if she thought that he had snuck into the bathroom to turn the shower on and make her think she got in without him any the wiser than to realize he was as human as her. Although, she wasn’t exceptionally keen to take a shower this early in the morning.

“I know an excellent repairman that could help with your door,” Ros said casually, eyes narrowed.

Lucas glanced over his shoulder as he finished preparing the coffee. “That’s fine. I can fix it, just haven’t had a chance.”

_More like you broke it in the first place and don’t want to undo your handiwork._

“If you’re sure,” Ros said with a shrug.

Lucas placed the coffee mug in front of her, prepared exactly as she had requested, before returning to lean against the kitchen counter. Not, she noticed, near the knife block, which was missing the knife she had on the table. They drank their coffee in silence, both of them sizing the other up. In the end, Ros wasn’t sure she gathered anything of use from him, and she could only hope he felt the same.

“Well, this has been fun,” Ros said, standing up. “I don’t suppose you have something I could use to get your fingerprints?”

Lucas smiled thinly at her. Again, the smile didn’t quite reach his eyes, and, again, Ros had an uneasy feeling. There was something deceptively disarming about his smile. Had she not been an intelligence officer and had she not been in the business as long as she had, she could easily see herself believing he was genuinely smiling at her.

 _I’ll have to keep an extra close eye on Jo and Ben, make sure they don’t do something stupid around him_.

He drained his mug before holding it up towards her in offering. “I trust this’ll suffice?”

Ros took the hand towel that was hanging over the oven handle – _how domestic of him_ – and took the mug from him with the towel. Carefully, she placed it into her bag. “Yes, I believe it will. Try not to be late for work.”

She turned towards the door. This time, she didn’t hesitate before opening the door, didn’t even wince when the hinges squealed again. “You really should fix the door,” she said, looking at it contemplatively. She walked out without waiting for his reply.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> LOCSEN - a codeword used for classified intelligence that has local sensitivity and cannot be shown to local officials.
> 
> As always, a huge thank you to Zen for beta reading this!


	12. Chapter 12

Despite her late-night rendezvous at Lucas’ flat, Ros still found herself going to the Grid much earlier than she probably ought to. It wasn’t as though it was entirely uncommon for Ros to come to work early, especially since Adam’s… passing. She knew that they could never have lasted. She meant what she had told him, that they were broken from day one. But his loss still hurt. It was still raw, knowing that she had her position only because the man she had loved was dead. Some nights, it kept her awake. Other times, she would wake to the pang of loneliness for the love that could have been. _No. We could never have been_. They had been broken from day one. Adam had never moved on from Fiona and Ros could never settle for being a replacement. Not even for Adam.

Still, she probably didn’t need to be on the Grid this early. But, when the alternative was to stare up at a ceiling that served only to remind her of everything she had lost when she had to fake her death, she figured she could be forgiven for coming to work early. Harry owed her that much. He had been the one to ask her to use her connections in Russia and go undercover in Moscow and she _had_. She gave him six months there, would have given him more if he hadn’t ordered her home. Ros had given up her house, her family, the possibility of seeing her father, even her _cat_ , for Harry. He could damn well overlook her deciding to come into work early.

She walked through the pods and took a deep breath. The Grid was quiet this early. Harry was in his office with the door shut. She allowed herself a small smile at the sight. That was one thing that hadn’t changed since her abrupt departure from Section D. Harry still hated it when people came into his office without knocking. That, and Malcolm’s presence on the Grid, would never change, she suspected.

She pointedly didn’t look at where Ruth’s desk once was. Ros didn’t regret her actions and she wouldn’t apologize for doing what any other officer would have done in her situation. But that didn’t mean she was proud of what she did. Ros could pretty up the truth, but, at the end of the day, she was motivated by more than just some circumstantial evidence against the least likely murderer in the United Kingdom, and she knew it. Hell, she was fairly certain _Harry_ knew it. _Maybe that’s why he’s keeping secrets from me_.

Ros sighed. She was still irked that Marlin had gotten one past her. She had meant what she had said to Dolby – if he was so displeased with her performance, he could sack her, but they both knew she had done the best with what she had available. No, not the best with what she had available. She had done admirably. She had stopped two bombs from going off. They had faulty intelligence and she still ensured that there were no civilian casualties, all without Harry Pearce ever picking up his bloody phone and responding to the red flash. That was a bloody miracle that she managed as well as she had. But it wasn’t the best.

It still rankled her, though. They should have been more prepared for any contingencies. Ben was still green at undercover operations. They shouldn’t have put him in this one as his first operation, not when it was so fraught with unknowns. Although, she supposed she didn’t have much other choice. Harry had been the one to suggest putting Ben undercover and Lucas in surveillance. She had been less than thrilled, but allowed it. Ben had to practice undercover work at some point and, as annoying as the unexpected realization that they were dealing with live bombs instead of a dry run had been, she supposed he had done adequately. But it was the principle of the fact that bothered Ros. Harry had given her Section D, yet he would disregard her concerns and make unilateral decisions without ever discussing them with her. She knew that he’d be expected to make some decisions without her, of course, but decisions about how to run the section? Decisions about who should be assigned what role in an operation? Decisions about _who_ was in her section? Those should be her territory, and yet Harry was making them anyway, often without even consulting her.

 

Ros scowled. She didn’t feel like going to her desk. Not this early, anyway, and certainly not when she was growing steadily angrier the longer she looked at Harry’s closed door. Besides, even if she _was_ inclined to go to her desk, she had already finished her paperwork from the night before, after Lucas had left. While she was sure that she could dig up some more paperwork to do, she never had been one for paperwork. _And, if Harry is so fond of doing my job for me, maybe_ ** _he_** _can do the paperwork, too_. Ros much preferred being in the field to being behind a desk and yesterday had only reinforced that. Although, the Home Secretary thanking her almost made up for it. _Almost_.

Not wanting to go to her desk and not wanting to go to the canteen and drink stale coffee, Ros elected, instead, to go to the gym. Better she work off her anger now than be cooped up all day on the Grid again. She had a feeling she was about to spend the day in never ending meetings, many of which would include discussing how Section D could improve in future operations. _Step one: tell Harry Pearce to stop stepping on my toes and let me run the bloody section the way he let Adam run the bloody section_.

It unnerved Ros a lot more than she cared to admit that Harry had been absent during the operation. It was unlike him to leave in the middle of an operation, even if it was supposed to simply be a dry run. Maybe if there had been someone more experienced undercover, maybe if they weren’t using damaged goods in surveillance, then she could understand Harry’s logic in leaving during the middle of an operation. But being unavailable, even when being red flashed? Being completely unreachable for hours? What had Harry been _doing_ that was so important that he couldn’t pick up his phone? The one time Ros _actually_ needed Harry there for guidance, he bloody well _wasn’t_.

 _This is ridiculous_. Lucas’ paranoia from yesterday was bleeding into her. She may have her misgivings about Harry and some of the decisions he had made, but she stood by what she told Lucas. If they couldn’t trust Harry, then who could they trust? As it was, she wasn’t sure she could trust Lucas, so why the bloody hell was she buying into his ridiculous conspiracy theories?

_I definitely need to hit something._

Finally making her way to the changing rooms, Ros changed quickly. When she exited the changing rooms, Ros was disappointed to see that she was not the only one avoiding upstairs. Lucas had earbuds in and was jogging on the treadmill. Her lip almost curled in distaste. She still didn’t trust Lucas. Their conversation yesterday hadn’t helped matters, nor had their late-night rendezvous. More than that, though, it was… _Lucas_ that she didn’t trust. It wasn’t just that he had spent eight years in FSB custody. She couldn’t get a read on him. He was too… quiet. Every time she spoke, she could feel him assessing her. She knew he had previously held her position. Ros kept expecting him to make some sort of play for it, or maybe he was waiting for her to slip up and he’d use that as justification as to why she was unfit to be Section Chief. But he never did. He just watched her and she hated that she couldn’t get a feel for what his angle was.

Maybe through some sort of uncanny sixth sense, or maybe from too many years being observed, Lucas abruptly came to a stop and glanced over his shoulder. He tugged his earbuds out and nodded at her. “Hey.” She was pleased to hear that his breathing was slightly heavy. _Maybe he isn’t as fit as both he and Harry seemed to think he is_.

“Hey yourself,” Ros said coolly and breezed by him. His presence in the gym, in her space when she was here, irked her. “Do I want to know how long you’ve been here?”

Lucas shrugged. “Long enough that I’ll leave.”

“Why? Scared of little old me?” Ros said. It was a deliberate jab. She rather doubted that Lucas was afraid of much after eight years in Russian prison. The fact that he hadn’t flinched when he had seen that she had taken the knife last night had only reinforced that belief.

He snorted. “Hardly.”

“Prove it,” she said. Harry’s word wasn’t good enough for Ros, not when it came to officers under her supervision, and certainly not after Adam. If Lucas was mentally or physically unfit for duty, Ros wanted to know about it so that she could take the appropriate steps. It had absolutely nothing to do with the fact that she wanted to establish that she was the best, not him, nor did it have anything to do with her wanting to assess if Lucas was as remarkably… average as he seemed to want everyone to think. _Nothing to do with those at all_. “If you’re not scared, let’s do a friendly spar. See if you really are as fit as you say you are.”

Lucas lifted an eyebrow. “I just ran for over an hour on this thing and you want to see if I can beat you in a fight?”

Ros shrugged. “If you’re too scared….”

“Your ego wouldn’t survive it.”

“Big words. You going to follow up on them or leave me to my imagination?”

The corner of his mouth tilted up. “Mum always told me it wasn’t nice to hit a woman.”

“You tell Tranquility that?” It was a low blow and Ros knew it, but –

She hadn’t time to finish her thought before Lucas’ shoulder connected with her stomach and he flipped her to the floor. Ros barely grunted before Lucas was straddling her, forearm across her throat, and her wrists caught in a vice grip. “Never said I listened to Mum,” he said.

In retrospect, Ros realized that maybe needling Lucas, fresh from prison, to spar wasn’t her greatest idea. But it was too late to back down. Besides, even if she could back down, she wouldn’t. She never was good at losing gracefully.

As Lucas got off her and offered her a hand up, Ros lashed out at his legs. Lucas was caught off guard and toppled. To his credit, he moved quickly and rolled before Ros could pounce on him. Both of them got up, warily eyeing the other. Lucas had a height and weight advantage over her, but Ros had received training on how to fight those taller and heavier than her when she first started undercover work for MI-6. If she could get him on his back or if she could incapacitate him, she could control the fight.

Ros struck first. Lucas took a step back at the last second, not entirely avoiding her strike, but not getting the brunt of it either. It hit him on the shoulder instead of the jaw, but it was still strong enough that it gave him pause. She pursed her lips and retreated back another step as well, eyeing him warily. He rolled his shoulder before giving her an irritating grin.“Nice right hook.”

“Don’t tell me you’re one of those chatty sparring partners,” Ros said.

“Will it make your day worse if I say I am?” he asked.

She scowled. “I’m not answering that.”

“You kind of already did,” he said, still giving her that annoying grin.

A lesser woman would have kicked him in the testicles for his irritating commentary. As a woman that was raised to value diplomacy and making offerings with one hand while the other moved in the shadows, Ros settled for feinting right before lunging for his unprotected left side. Lucas grunted as her foot connected with his side and fell back a step. She pressed the advantage. Lucas met her attacks defensively, blocking or side-stepping the majority of her attacks. Still, she managed to slip some hits past his defence. At one point, Lucas started to lunge at her before oddly changing his mind at the last minute. Ros gave him another right hook for it and got him solidly in the jaw.

Lucas scowled as he fell back a step from the force of her blow. He gently touched his fingers to his jaw before shaking his head once. Ros paused, cocking her head slightly. She hadn’t thought that she had hit him _that_ hard. Unlike before, Lucas didn’t take advantage of her hesitance. Instead, Lucas silently lifted his hands in surrender.

Ros smiled thinly. _I suppose that means I win_. The victory felt hollow, though. “No witty commentary?” she asked as she backed off.

“Thought you didn’t like chatty sparring partners,” Lucas muttered, tentatively rubbing his jaw.

“If you’re trying to trick me into answering that, it’s not going to work,” Ros said.

“So,” Lucas said. “Do I get to keep my job or should I polish up my curriculum?”

Her eyes narrowed. It was true, she had been silently evaluating him, but she hadn’t thought she was _that_ transparent. Still, she felt a surge of anger flash through her. Lucas had been… average at _best_ in their impromptu spar and he had the audacity to be flippant about it? Adam was _dead_ because Lucas couldn’t get the damn codes from Tranquility. Not for the first time, Ros wondered what Harry had been thinking sending _Lucas_ to get the codes from Tranquility. _You should have told him to drive the car and Adam to get the codes_ , she thought uncharitably.

Still, Adam was dead. She couldn’t change the past, no matter how much she may want to, and she was stuck with Lucas instead of Adam. Getting angry at him for not being a good fighter wouldn’t do her any good, not if she wanted him to start slipping up around her, which he wouldn’t do if she couldn’t find a way to chip at his guard. Forcing herself to give him a winning smile that she didn’t feel, Ros lied, “Not bad, I suppose.”

Lucas snorted, but gave no indication on if he believed her lie. “Careful, I might take that as a compliment.”

“I’ve fought little old ladies that gave me more challenge, though.”

The corner of his mouth quirked up, but Ros noted the smirk didn’t quite make it to his eyes. It was disconcerting how often he did that, she decided. “I’m more concerned about the fact that you’re fighting little old ladies. What, can’t find anyone willing to fight you that might actually beat you?”

“Never was a fan of losing.”

“Evidently,” Lucas said as he turned on his heel. He lifted his hand in farewell, notably only holding up two fingers as he walked off. _Bastard_. She glared at his retreating back. Oh, she’d get even for that.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Zen's had a rough week and she requested (by hitting me over the head! :P ) I post the next chapter a bit early, so here we go! Did I just call out my lovely beta reader who helped me rework this scene until I was happy? Yes, yes I did. ;)


	13. Chapter 13

In retrospect, sparring with Ros had not been one of Lucas’ best ideas. In fact, he would say it was about as brilliant as the time he had to – reluctantly, he remembered, **_very_** reluctantly – go undercover with Tessa. Which was to say, it was not bloody brilliant at all. At least the undercover operation had been due to an order. This morning had been sheer frustration at being glared at for daring to exist. Not to mention, the fact that she had broken into his bloody flat last night. He was still angry that she had broken into his flat. It didn’t matter that he would have done the same thing – and that he had done the same thing, just better because he knew what he was bloody well doing. He had spent eight years having interrogators enter and leave his cell. He was getting rather tired of past and present colleagues breaking into his flat. _This bloody well better not become a regular occurrence_. If it did, he might just take Tom up on his offer to sweep the flat. _Or maybe I’ll just fucking move and not tell anyone. Because that’ll go over so well_.

Still, Ros’ glares were starting to annoy him. Really, she could at least _pretend_ that she trusted him. He hadn’t missed her glare when she had seen him in the gym and then, when he tried to do her the courtesy of leaving her to work out without his apparently offensive presence, she had started poking and prodding, trying to get a feel for him. So he gave her something, and he gained something in return.

_More like I gained a few bruises_ , he thought irritably. Still, the sparring match had felt good, exhilarating, even if he had forced himself to hold back. It wasn’t until she had hit him soundly in the jaw that he felt old instincts, ones he worked _very hard_ to ignore during their sparring match, rise up and threaten to take over.Four years in general populace had taught him a lot, certainly more than any self-defence course that Harry sent his spooks to. But his entire plan hinged on making everyone underestimate him, not beat the new Section Chief to a bloody pulp because she stirred up some old memories. He knew his strengths, even if he wasn’t willing to tip his hand yet. He could not care less if Ros thought he was capable, so long as she didn’t push Harry to put him on leave.

Still, his temporary lapse into the past aside, it was… almost a relief to hit something, _anything_ , after the nightmares caused him to spend most of the night awake and staring at the ceiling, praying that they would leave. Lucas closed his eyes and clenched his hand, forcing himself to steer away from that particular train of thought. If he went there, if he kept going down that path with the memories so close to the surface, he’d have to deal with the possibility of the cracks starting to show. He wasn’t eager to give Ros any more ammunition to get him fired than strictly necessary. Instead, he focused on the fact that, when he had given up on sleep for the night and decided to do a bastardized mix of a shower and a bath, Ros had broken into his bloody flat. _Much better to focus on_.

Ros came onto the Grid, looking much better off than he did. Granted, she probably actually slept last night, excluding the few hours she had spent preparing and then breaking into his flat, and hadn’t spent an hour or two running on the treadmill before their spar. She had returned to her icy ignoring of his existence, which suited him fine. He had had enough of always being measured, examined, and studied for cracks. It was almost a relief to not have to endure that same treatment here. Or at least not as often. He’d settle for that, though. It was the little things, after all.

She didn’t acknowledge him, which suited him just fine, as she walked towards Harry’s office. The door hissed shut, and Lucas turned to his doughnut. What was the point of running on a treadmill for a couple hours every day and going for a run almost every night when he found himself incapable of sleep if he couldn’t enjoy a doughnut every now and then?

Fifteen minutes later, doughnut finished, and the coffee mug on his desk half-emptied, Ros came back out of Harry’s office and dropped a file on Lucas’ desk as she breezed by. Lucas waited until Ros had sat down at her desk opposite his before he leaned over and picked up the file. He flipped through it quickly, absorbing the information with increasing levels of shock. “Al-Qaeda wants to talk?” he murmured, lifting an eyebrow. That was a surprise. He would have thought hell would have frozen over before the Al-Qaeda wanted a meet.

“We’re not sure,” she said as she eyed his coffee mug. “Which is why we’re sending you to meet with the asset and find out what they want.”

Lucas exhaled. He shouldn’t be annoyed. Really, he shouldn’t be. This was what he had wanted. It was easier to be underestimated if he was doing menial tasks that a junior case officer could do easily than it would be if he was doing what he _should_ be doing as a senior case officer. Ben or Jo could easily collect the information from the asset, but Ros was sending him, either because he had adequately convinced her that he was not nearly as skilled as he was, or because she was challenging him and wanted to see what he would do.

If his eight-year sabbatical had taught him anything, it was patience.

“Alright,” he said as he got up and shrugged on his jacket. “Don’t drink my coffee while I’m out.”

He didn’t miss the way Ros gave him a two-fingered salute. Lucas smiled as he walked through the pods. _Touché_.

-x-

_Well, that didn’t go as planned_.

The asset was in surgery and Lucas had a cut on his hand. Ros secretly hoped there was poison on the knife that had cut him, but had a feeling she wouldn’t be rid of Lucas that easily. What irked her was that all they had to show for their efforts was a sim card and the knowledge that Mohammed Khordad wanted a meet. She pinched the bridge of her nose. This was not the news she wanted to receive a week after a bomb went off in London. Al-Qaeda’s number three was going to be in town. _And there’s no possible way that can go badly_. The United Kingdom couldn’t afford another terrorist attack. London would devolve into chaos if another bomb went off. The press was already tearing MI-5 apart for having a catastrophic lack of intelligence that resulted in three dead C019 officers. They wouldn’t survive a second bomb.

What did Marlin say? That the Al-Qaeda wanted an attack that would undermine confidence? Well, they sure as hell had gotten it. And now they were looking to solidify the feelings of unease. _Wonderful_.

Of course, there was the matter of the United Kingdom’s allies having a vested interest in Khordad’s activities. The Americans were rather single-minded in their war on terror. Ros had a feeling they not only would respond unfavourably to Khordad wanting a meet, but that they would be furious if they found out he was in London and MI-5 hadn’t told them. But, at the same time, the intelligence Khordad could give them…. If they could turn him, if they could get him to defect, he’d be one of the most valuable intelligence assets MI-5 had had in a long, long time. Of course, that was all circumstantial. They had to meet with him and see what he wanted before they could start looking at turning him, all without the Americans being any wiser to his presence in the United Kingdom.

Ros tapped a pen against her palm as she wished that she had thought to pick up a coffee instead of going to the gym. She had a feeling she was going to empty the pot on her own at this rate and she didn’t even _like_ the coffee on the Grid. This whole mess stank. There were too many variables at play here. Khordad could be playing them. He was Al-Qaeda’s number three. He was _personally_ responsible for the torture and death of three MI-6 officers. She wasn’t entirely certain agreeing to a meet was a wise idea. _Maybe we can send Lucas to that too_ , she thought, glancing sidelong at him contemplatively.

“Lucas,” she said abruptly. His eyes flicked up at her from the file he was reading. “You spoke with the asset, correct?”

“Yeah. All he said was that Khordad wanted to talk,” Lucas said before returning to reading the file. She didn’t miss how quickly he flipped through the pages.

She nodded, chewing on her lip. Maybe she could salvage something out of this. She knew Lucas was good. No one could pull off a triple agent con as easily as he had and be as… remarkably average as he was. Harry kept telling her that Lucas was this amazing, brilliant field officer but, beyond the triple agent con, she had yet to see it and it frustrated her because there was something there, there _had_ to be if he survived eight years in Russian prison. _Unless he really has been a rotten apple all along_. That would be unfortunate. She wondered how Harry would take the news if Lucas turned out to be a quadruple agent.

“I want you to lead the debriefing,” she said, finally.

“Me?” he asked in surprise, looking back up at her, even as his eyes narrowed as though trying to figure out her angle. Inwardly, Ros smiled. Already, he had slipped by letting her know that he thought she was up to something. _You don’t know how to be average, do you?_ The thought warmed her insides, leading to a slight upturn of her lips. An average officer wouldn’t have thought she was up to something. A brilliant one might.

“Did I stutter?” she asked, lifting an eyebrow. “I want you to take point on the debrief.”

He scowled. “Isn’t that _your_ job?”

“No, _my_ job is to _delegate_ and I am _delegating_ you to debrief everyone,” Ros said smartly. She was starting to get the impression she wasn’t the only person that disliked having to debrief everyone. That just made her even more certain she was making the right decision in telling him to lead the debriefing. Forcing Lucas to step into the spotlight, instead of his preferred proverbial shadows, and making him do something he didn’t like? Plans didn’t get much better than that.

“Fine,” he said as he reached over and took the file off her desk. She studied him for a moment more before turning to her own computer. Truly, she hated paperwork, but probably the only thing she hated more than paperwork was leading debriefings. As much as Ros enjoyed being in charge and being able to delegate, she much preferred being in the field rather than cooped up on the Grid.

Besides, she had read Lucas’ file. He had been Section Chief before Operation Polecat and had gotten the job when he had only been twenty-two years old. It irked her that he more than likely held the title for youngest Section Chief… which then made her question why Harry had chosen Lucas over someone with more experience and more maturity. Ros intended to find out for herself if Lucas really was as good as Harry seemed to think he was, and if that meant she had to start delegating some of her responsibilities to him to put him in a position where he couldn’t take advantage of the fact that no one seemed to pay him and his quiet self much mind, then she would do just that.

_I always did like a challenge_.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As always, big thank you to my lovely beta reader, Zen! <3


	14. Chapter 14

Lucas grimaced as he stood in the hallway. It was ridiculous, being abruptly apprehensive about seeing his cousin for the first time in eight years. He had stared down FSB interrogators, Russian inmates, and terrorists, yet here he was, worrying over the third degree Kate Acker was undoubtedly going to give him. He tried hard not to think about the fact that he was about to use his cousin the same way he used his ex-wife. _Were you always this cold?_ Elizabeta’s words haunted him and he closed his eyes against the memory. He had a job to do. Harry’s orders were explicit and, regardless of how Lucas felt about them, he was as angry as everyone else on the Grid that the Americans had shot down Khordad’s plane.

He hesitated before knocking on the door. Kate and Lucas had been close when they were younger. Where Kate’s mum, Iris, and his dad, John, had never been close growing up, after both Iris and Margaret had difficult pregnancies, they had thought it would be good for both Kate and Lucas if they grew up together, especially where they were so close in age. For the most part, it had even worked. Lucas thought of Kate more of like a sister than a cousin and knew that the feeling was mutual. Kate had given Lucas much needed alibis on more than one occasion when they had been teenagers and he had been the one to support Kate throughout her unplanned pregnancy.

When he first joined MI-5, Lucas had thought about telling Kate. _God_ , he wanted to. But it was for her own safety that he didn’t. That didn’t stop the guilt every time he had to bug her office for Harry or had lie to her about his job. _Probably for the best that I don’t tell her what I do_. Kate had inherited her father’s temper and was liable to remove Lucas’ cock if she found out he worked for MI-5. She, like many human rights lawyers, shared the opinion that MI-5 was not the greatest at respecting human rights. _Well, if they didn’t plan to murder people, we wouldn’t have to infringe on their rights_. Somehow, Lucas rather doubted Kate would accept that explanation.

Still, despite the lies, Lucas had made an effort to keep ties with Kate after joining MI-5. When Kate first found out she was pregnant with her daughter, Michelle, Lucas was pretty certain that she had told him first instead of her own mother. He had been the one to tell her that, no matter what she wanted to do, he’d help her through it. Kate had asked Lucas to be Michelle’s godfather and occasional babysitter while she finished her degree and, afterwards, when she had to work late. It… saddened him, he supposed, that Kate wouldn’t exactly be surprised if he told her he went to prison for stealing something and that’s why he had disappeared for eight years.

Lucas inhaled slowly and knocked on Kate’s door. Harry had been clear. The CIA had overstepped their boundaries when they had shot down Khordad’s plane. If they actually thought that there wouldn’t be any repercussions for destroying a rare chance for peace, then Lucas was pleased to think they would be sorely mistaken. _Now if only it didn’t involve getting my cousin involved_.

A young girl, couldn’t be more than fourteen, opened the door. “Mum! There’s a strange bloke here!” the girl called. Lucas winced. _Christ, she’s grown_. The last time he’d seen Michelle, she’d been just starting primary.

“Nice to see you too, Squirt,” Lucas said. He wondered if she’d even remember him. “Your mum around?”

No sooner had he spoken did Kate Acker appear. Kate was shorter than Lucas, although he supposed most people were shorter than him, and stood at a fearsome five foot three, six if she wore heels. Her brown hair was cropped short, hanging to about her jaw. _That’s new_ , he thought. Some things had stayed the same, though. She, like Lucas, was pale enough that she would go through half a bottle of sunscreen if she ever went to the beach for more than half an hour. Unlike Lucas, she had had aspirations as a kid and went to Oxford on scholarship. She also was _far_ more expressive than he had ever been, even before prison.

Kate’s brown eyes were wide as she stared at him for a moment, her mouth hanging open. “Lucas,” she sputtered finally, blinking. “You’re…”

“Feeling like a bloody tit standing in the hallway,” Lucas said.

Michelle, who looked much like her mother had when Kate had been Michelle’s age, stared at him. “Lucas?” Maybe she did remember him after all.

“That’d be me, yeah,” Lucas said, winking.

“Michelle, honey, go wash up and set an extra plate at the table for Lucas,” Kate said. Michelle stared at Lucas for a moment more before trudging off to do as Kate ordered. Poor Kate had no idea what she was in for, if Michelle was anything like Lucas when he was her age. As soon as Michelle was gone, Kate pointed at Lucas. "You, in. Now.”

 _Shit_. He knew that tone. It was the same tone his mum had used on him anytime he was in trouble. Which, given his rather turbulent teenage years, meant he was rather acquainted with that tone and knew it brokered no argument. He was starting to think it was a mum thing, expressing very clear displeasure and authority in as few words as possible. While some on the Grid _might_ suggest Lucas still had a long way to go in learning to pick his battles, Lucas wisely elected not to fight Kate on this one. Instead, he stepped inside and shut the door behind him. He could hear water running as Michelle washed her hands.

“You haven’t called,” Kate said, eyes narrowed. She planted her hands on her hips.

“Been busy,” Lucas hedged.

“So busy you can’t find time to pick up your phone in the last eight years?”

“It’s a long story,” he muttered.

“Try me.”

Lucas hesitated for a moment. He glanced down the hall to make sure that Michelle was still in the bathroom. Finally, he said, “Got caught stealing something. Went to prison. Just got out.” It was the short version and the only one he was willing to provide. Once, it might have bothered him how easily lying to his cousin – and everyone else for that matter – came to him. Instead, he felt… oddly removed from the lie. _Have you always been this cold, under the skin?_ If he hadn’t spent eight years perfecting the art of schooling his features, Lucas would have flinched at Vyeta’s words flashing through his mind.

“You were in _jail_?” Kate asked, incredulously. “Shit, Lucas. I… why didn’t you call me? I could have helped you.”

Lucas smiled bitterly. “I didn’t do time here.”

“Where?”

“Russia.”

The water in the bathroom shut off and Michelle came back down the hall. She paused to squint at Lucas, studying him closely. Unconsciously, Lucas shifted his stance, clasping his hands in front of him as he looked away from Michelle. Whatever she found, whatever she thought, Michelle came to a conclusion, evidently, as she shrugged and moved into the kitchen to do as her mother had asked.

“Russia,” Kate said as soon as she was certain Michelle was out of earshot. “What the bloody hell were you doing in _Russia_? No, don’t answer that. I don’t want to know. What were you _thinking_ , stealing in Russia?”

Lucas shrugged. “That I wouldn’t get caught.”

Kate ran a hand through her hair. “Have you told your mum yet?”

He made a face. Truthfully, Lucas hadn’t even called his mum. Or his dad. Eight years ago, he had been too angry to keep up with regular communication and had only, rather pointedly, called his mum on holidays and on her birthday. He never spoke with his dad, though. Now that he was out, he felt… ashamed over his previous anger. With all the difficulties Lucas was going through, he had a newfound appreciation for his father’s coping strategies when Margaret had gotten sick. Still, Lucas’ shame kept him from calling. And what would he tell them, anyway? Kate’s disappointment that he had been in prison was almost more than he could bear. He wasn’t sure he could handle hearing his parents’ lack of surprise that he wound up in prison.

“Shit,” Kate said again. She ran her fingers through her hair. When she pulled her hand away, she said, “You’re not going to ask me to lie to them for you, are you?”

“No,” he said softly. “I’ll ring them.” _Eventually_. “Figured I was in the neighbourhood and I’d swing by to see how you’re doing. And see Squirt. Evidently, she doesn’t remember me.”

Kate snorted inelegantly. “No shit. You were gone for eight years.” There was a clang of cutlery from the kitchen. “Well, you might as well come in and eat.”

Lucas smiled. There was one thing that had never changed. Growing up in a small village had instilled a sense of community that meant that there was always an extra place at the table for guests. As much as Kate had been like Lucas and had hated being in Braithwaite, the values she had learned there followed her to London. It was good to see at least some things stayed the same about Kate.

Kicking off his shoes and hanging his jacket up in the closet, Lucas followed Kate into the kitchen. Where Lucas’ kitchen was more of a… bachelor’s kitchen, Kate’s was every inch a warm and inviting kitchen. Even the colours were warm. She repainted. _Thank God_. Whoever had lived in the flat before her thought lime green was a great colour for the kitchen. Lucas nearly shuddered in memory. He had kept offering to help her repaint, but she was always busy with work or with being a single mother and had never found the time to pick out a colour, much less repaint.

Kate picked up Michelle’s plate and, as she did, cupped Michelle’s cheek. Lucas smiled almost sadly. This was the life that Vyeta had wanted. Warm kitchen. Good food. A kid at the table. Lucas had always balked whenever Vyeta had brought up kids. He couldn’t tell her that he didn’t want to have children because of his work, where the life expectancy of field officers was… not the highest. Not to say that he was certain to die in the line of duty, just that most intelligence officers Lucas knew of didn’t leave the Service through retirement. And Lucas could never put Vyeta, or a child, through that. Certainly, he knew that Harry would make sure they were cared for, but if Lucas was going to have a kid, he wanted to _be_ there for the kid, not constantly worry if this was the operation that would leave his wife a widow and his child fatherless.

Silently, Lucas picked up both his plate and Kate’s and followed his cousin into the kitchen. She put some rice on one side of Michelle’s plate and stir-fry beside it. When Kate looked at Lucas and almost dared him to make a comment about how Michelle clearly took after Kate when it came to a dislike of food touching, Lucas merely grinned.

“You’re lucky I don’t believe in violence in front of my daughter,” Kate muttered as she took her plate from Lucas’ hand and shoved Michelle’s into his now empty hand. “Bring that over to her, will you?”

Lucas put his plate down on the counter and put the plate in front of Michelle. She kept sneaking glances at him and he was suddenly glad that he had had the foresight to roll his sleeves down to hide the tattoos. While Lucas rather doubted Kate kept Michelle sheltered, he didn’t exactly want to have to explain to her prison tattoos, nor how they were made. Especially not over dinner. Kate might get it in her head to try testing her rule about violence in front of her daughter if he started regaling Michelle with the sordid tale of how prison tattoos were made.

Kate came into the dining room and deposited both her plate and Lucas’ on the table before going back into the kitchen. “Wine?” she called.

“Only if you don’t have beer,” Lucas said. It had been a beer kind of day and he had a feeling it was going to be a beer kind of night.

The fridge open and he heard wine slosh into a glass. Kate came into the kitchen again, this time with a can of beer, a wine glass, and a glass of milk juggled between her hands. Lucas swore it was a mum thing, being able to deftly carry more than two drinks at a time. His mum had been able to do the exact same thing and, while he had done his best to duck out of dinner with Aunt Iris growing up, the few times he had been forcibly dragged there, she had been able to juggle multiple drinks as well.

The drinks deposited, Kate finally sat down, and they started to eat. Michelle continued to sneak glances at Lucas, while Lucas focused rather hard on pushing his food around on his plate. He caught Kate sneaking a glance at him and gave her an imperceptible shrug. Eight years on a… new diet had left Lucas being very cautious about what he ate and how much. So, he took a few bites, just to appease Kate, but didn’t eat much more than that. Kate, thankfully, didn’t say anything at the table, but he had a feeling he’d hear about it later.

Finally, Kate broke the silence. “Michelle, honey, this is your godfather, Lucas. You remember me telling you about him, right?”

“Mum said you’re an arsehole,” Michelle said around a mouthful of rice.

“Michelle,” Kate said, nearly dropping her fork. “Language!”

“Well, your mum’s not wrong,” Lucas mused. “I’m pretty certain most people in our family would agree with her.”

“What’d you do?” Michelle asked, suddenly _far_ more interested in him than she was before. He smiled again. No, some things really didn’t change.

“Don’t you dare encourage her,” Kate said, pointing her fork threateningly at Lucas. Lucas just grinned.

“I said some unflattering things about your grandmum,” Lucas said. It wasn’t a total lie, although he suspected that was the _least_ of the reasons why he was contentedly considered the proverbial black sheep in the family.

“Like what?” Michelle asked.

“Oh, you know, usual skulky teenager things,” Lucas said, shrugging vaguely. Kate snorted. She knew _exactly_ what he had said to her mum. He hadn’t gone to too many dinners at his aunt’s after _that_ rather spectacular fight.

Michelle pouted when it became clear Lucas wasn’t going to elaborate more. “Oh.”

Lucas pushed a piece of beef around with his fork as Michelle and Kate finished eating. When Kate started to gather the plates, he gestured for her to sit and took everyone’s plates into the kitchen. Eight years might have passed, but Kate kept her kitchen organized the exact same way she had always kept it and he found the tupperware containers quickly enough. He could hear Kate marshalling Michelle into her room to do homework as he put the rest of dinner away. He _even_ remembered that Kate liked to put sticky notes on the containers so as to date when it was made. He even doodled a rather impressive stick figure of a cow on the sticky note for the stir fry before putting it in the fridge.

He was just finishing up rinsing the dishes and putting them into the dishwasher when Kate came into the kitchen. She had retrieved her glass of wine and watched him for a moment before going into the fridge and getting him another beer. “Did you _really_ draw a cow on the sticky note?”

“Could have been anyone,” Lucas quipped. He raised the beer in a mock toast before taking a sip.

Kate rolled her eyes. “Thanks for cleaning up.”

Lucas shrugged. “Thanks for the food.”

“That you didn’t eat.”

“Wasn’t hungry,” he lied.

Kate scrutinized Lucas and he tensed under her stare. After a long, drawn out silence, Kate said, “Michelle’s in her room doing homework. You want to stay for an hour or two, catch up?”

He glanced down the hall. Michelle’s door was closed and he thought he could hear music playing through the door. _Good_. He didn’t need her hearing what he had to tell Kate. “Well, you know me and my busy social life,” he said as he smiled. “Yeah, I can stay for a bit.”

Kate gestured towards the living room. “I need to go make sure Michelle is actually doing her homework. Meet you in the living room?”

Lucas snorted as he lifted his beer in acknowledgement and made his way to the living room. He smiled to himself as he sat down on the couch. It was just like Kate to make sure the people around her were _actually_ doing homework instead of sloughing off. She had always been the mother hen, making sure the people around her - _okay, making sure_ ** _I_** , Lucas amended - were doing their work, eating healthy, and getting enough sleep. His world might have turned on its head in the wake of Russia, but at least Kate stayed the same. Mostly.

As he waited for Kate to come back, Lucas turned his phone over in his hands, staring hard at the window. He had to do this carefully, or she would think something was off or, worse, she’d start trying to poke holes in Lucas’ story. As far as Kate was aware, he was in private security. So far, he’d been able to sustain the lie by simply telling her that he couldn’t talk about his work due to confidentiality, something that Kate, as a lawyer, could appreciate. But, if she thought for a second that he had obtained something in a less than legal way, or if she thought that some part of his story didn’t hold up, then she’d start doing her lawyer thing and examining him and questioning him and it’d become increasingly hard to sell the story that he was in private security.

Fifteen minutes later, Kate was shutting Michelle’s door behind her and joined him on the couch. “Remember when we were that young?” Kate asked.

“You mean how we would sneak out and go hunting for monsters in the woods?” Lucas asked, smiling.

“I meant when we were that innocent, but I guess that works too,” Kate said as she drew her legs up to her chest.

Lucas glanced away. That felt like a lifetime ago. The silence stretched between them, but it wasn’t an awkward silence. That was something he loved about Kate. She understood that Lucas didn’t always want to talk, that sometimes it was enough to just sit with someone and not have to say anything. He had always been a quiet kid and, around most people, just felt awkward when he didn’t want to talk. Around Kate, it was always a companionable silence.

After a few minutes, Kate sighed and looked hard at him. “How are you doing, Lucas? Really?”

Lucas stared down at his phone, unable to meet her eyes. The downside of being close with his cousin, Lucas thought, was that she had an uncanny ability to read him. As an attorney – a human rights attorney, at that – Kate was usually fairly good at reading people. She had to be. If people were selling her shit, she had to be able to see through it in order to get her job done. He wasn’t stupid. He didn’t, for a second, believe that Kate would buy any of his lies, so he was always… careful about how much he shared about his work. If she tried to probe, he simply said that it was best if he didn’t give her his company’s name. Every time, her lips would press together in displeasure. She knew he was feeding her bullshit, but she knew he was stubborn enough that he wasn’t going to cave.

He wondered if, after eight years, his lying had improved at all. “Not great,” he said, deciding not to test it. _Were you always so cold, underneath the skin?_ He nearly cringed in memory. Once, Lucas wouldn’t have even thought about lying to Kate. Once. A lifetime ago.

She nodded. “You saw Elizabeta.” Kate was quick, he’d give her that much.

“Yeah.”

“I’m sorry, Lucas,” Kate said, covering her hand with his.

Lucas stared hard at the wall opposite the couch. They stayed like that for a few minutes. He wasn’t sure what to say and, even if he did know what to say, he wasn’t sure he _could_ voice those words. It was still too… raw. He had spent eight years wishing he could see Vyeta again. Eight years thinking of nothing but her. Even when… on his darker days – or nights, he wasn’t really sure – he had thought of her. When he finally came home, he wasn’t sure what he had expected. He didn’t exactly hope that she hadn’t moved on… but that didn’t change the fact that it hurt to see that she _had_ moved on.

The minutes dragged on. Kate gave his hand a squeeze. “You look like shit,” Kate said. “You been sleeping?”

Lucas smiled wryly. _No_. His nights were filled with nightmares that, more often than not, would cause him to wake up from the sound of his own screams. Other times, every time he tried to sleep, the memories would be… overwhelming. With nothing to distract him, he had nothing else to think on other than prison and what it had cost him. Sometimes, he tried to focus on figuring out who burned him, but even that was a hollow attempt to distract himself. He didn’t like the implication that the people he had worked with, that someone he had considered practically family, that he would have taken a goddamn bullet for, had betrayed him.

His silence was answer enough. Kate looked at him the same way his mum used to when he’d be escorted home by the police officer on duty. Her lips were pursed and her eyes were clouded with frustration. She didn’t understand and it was written plainly across her face. Whenever he had seen his mum look at him like that, it had sent a stab of guilt through Lucas. Not enough to stop him from getting into mischief again, but enough that it was present. Kate’s look had the same effect.

“You seeing anyone for it?” Kate asked. “My firm has a therapist that’s – ”

“Yeah, I’m seeing a shrink,” Lucas said. _Sometimes_. More often than not, he would go to the weekly sessions to make Harry happy, but that didn’t mean he had to _share_ anything with the damn shrink. If they knew even a fraction of what he went through in prison, he’d lose his credentials and be put on stress leave, no doubt. Not exactly what he wanted. Not when he needed access to the Grid to find whoever burned him.

Kate nodded slowly. She looked like she had bitten into a lemon or something equally sour. It wasn’t a far stretch to imagine why. Lucas wasn’t exactly known for talking about the things that bothered him, even when he was younger. Not much had changed as he had grown older and Lucas was fairly certain that Kate had come to the correct conclusion that, yes, he was _seeing_ a shrink, but he wasn’t _talking_ to the shrink. Or at least, if he was talking to the shrink, he wasn’t sharing anything of actual depth. He had no intention of telling the shrink, or anyone else for that matter, what kept him up at night. Still, Kate didn’t push the matter. Stubbornness ran in the family and, while he had no doubts she had opinions on his not speaking to the shrink, they both knew as soon as she started trying to tell him to speak to the shrink, he’d stop seeing the damn therapist all together.

They lulled into silence again. Kate withdrew her hand and Lucas could feel the small hairs on the back of his neck stand up as she studied him. He forced himself to stay still, to not react to her scrutiny. After a few minutes, Kate sighed. “I’m guessing you didn’t come over for a social call.”

Smiling tightly, Lucas shook his head. “My work found something. I thought you might like it.”

“Oh?”

Lucas opened the video on his phone and showed it to Kate. It was the video of the Americans abducting Khordad off the street and he knew he had Kate’s interest as he watched her expression darken. “Where was this?”

“Outside the British National Museum,” Lucas said. “We were making sure the security systems were still in place and working when we saw this.”

“I trust you’ve already identified the plate number?” she said as she rewatched the video.

“Yeah. It belongs to the CIA.”

Kate paused before looking up at Lucas. “And you brought this to me because…?”

Kate had always been sharp. She knew Lucas and she had to suspect that he wouldn’t risk giving her something for free, especially if his work was involved. Carefully, Lucas said, “Because I hate the idea that they’ll get away with this. Americans abducting British citizens from the streets? What’s next?” He paused before continuing, “I asked my boss what he thought of it and he said the same thing I did: bollocks and like hell the Americans are getting away with this.”

“Which is where I come in,” Kate said, nodding again. “You know I don’t like being used as your work’s retainer. Especially when you won’t tell me the company you work for.”

Lucas smiled enigmatically. “I know. But I also know you’re the best damn human rights lawyer this city has and, if we want to make sure that the CIA doesn’t abduct any other British citizens, we need the best.”

“Flatterer,” Kate said, pointing at him. Still, Lucas knew he had her when she asked, “Who do you go to if I say no?”

“Sam.”

“Sam? As in that oily bastard, Sam Stevens?”

Lucas would have thought that Kate and Sam would have been on the same page, given that they both had a rather ardent hatred of MI-5 and MI-5’s methods. Instead, the two had a rather fearsome rivalry. Sam was arrogant and full of himself and couldn’t see that, sometimes, working _with_ MI-5 benefited the people. At least Kate could be reasoned with. While Lucas hadn’t been in the conference room, Harry had told him how he and Ros practically had to blackmail the fool into helping MI-5. Sam was more worried about his reputation and what he might lose if he was ever caught working with MI-5. Kate looked at the big picture and, while she may not like helping MI-5 on occasion, she would. Or at least Lucas thought she would. He had always been careful to avoid telling her he was a spook. As far as she was concerned, she was actually just helping his private security firm. _May it stay that way_.

“The one and only,” Lucas said. “Look, you know that you’re my first choice because you’ll do this right, but my boss was adamant. You or Sam. The CIA can’t think they can get away with this or they’ll do it more frequently.”

Kate snatched Lucas’ phone out of his hand and watched the video again. “Don’t think I don’t know what you’re doing, Lucas North,” Kate said as she replayed the video once more. “Manipulating me, using my dislike of Sam to get me to do what you want.”

“Think of the people,” Lucas said sarcastically.

Without looking up from the screen, Kate reached over, grabbed a pillow, and threw it at Lucas. He caught it with a chuckle and put it on his side of the couch, safely out of Kate’s reach. “Bastard,” Kate said. “Is that who I think it is?”

“Depends. Who do you think that is?”

“Mohammed Khordad. Al-Qaeda’s number three,” Kate said. She showed Lucas the phone and he saw that she had zoomed in on Khordad’s face as he was being snatched.

“Huh,” Lucas said as if he didn’t already know who was in that video.

“Not a British citizen, then,” Kate said. “That’ll complicate things. I don’t suppose your work has done their homework on the CIA and knows who’s in charge of operations in London?”

“Lori Hanson,” Lucas said after a moment, as if he had to think of the name. “Which, of course, we don’t know.”

“Naturally,” Kate said. She tapped her lower lip as she watched the video again. “And you’re sure this happened outside the British National Museum? On the street?”

“Positive.”

She sighed. “I might be able to convince a judge to at least consider the implications of allowing the CIA to abduct anyone off British streets.”

Lucas leaned over and kissed Kate’s forehead. “Thanks.”

“Yeah, you know me. Thinking of the people,” she said, just as sarcastically as he had. “Can I get a copy of this video?”

Lucas took his phone back and emailed it to her. She ran a hand through her hair before pointing a finger at him. “You owe me for this.”

“The _people_ owe you,” Lucas teased.

Kate snorted. “Well, the people won’t bloody well buy me a coffee, now will they? It better be the good stuff, too.”

Lucas grinned. “Fine.”

After another lull in the conversation, Kate said, “What are your plans for Easter?”

Inwardly, Lucas cringed. He was afraid Kate would ask him that. His truthful answer was that he was planning on getting blissfully drunk. The memories of not only everything he had lost, but of what _happened_ on those days were overwhelming at the best of times. Oleg had… enjoyed… _celebrating_ holidays with Lucas. Even now that he was out of prison, having to actually be sober for the day itself did not seem exceptionally appealing to Lucas.

Still, he couldn’t exactly tell Kate that he was planning on making a sizeable dent in his vodka. “Nothing major.”

Kate lifted an eyebrow. “You should come home with me and Michelle. Your parents would love to see you.”

 _And there it is._ He had a feeling that’s why Kate had been asking. When Lucas had been in prison, he had spent a lot of time talking to God and one of the promises he had made was that, if he ever got out, he would try to mend fences with his father. Still, it seemed… daunting. And he wasn’t sure he would be able to handle being around his family for the holidays, not when he would be keenly missing Vyeta and the fact that she wasn’t there with him. Besides, as with most holidays, Easter in the North household was… loudly celebrated. Family from all over would congregate. Women would be in the kitchen, bustling to get dinner ready and doing baking and swatting any errant hands trying to get a taste of cookie dough with a wooden spoon. Men would be drinking and helping to set the tables and keeping the younger generations entertained. It was… busy. And Lucas wasn’t sure he was ready to deal with that kind of busy yet.

“I’m not sure that’d be a good idea,” he said quietly, staring at the floor. “Not exactly feeling the Easter spirit.”

“Will you at least consider it? You shouldn’t be alone on Easter.”

He winced. Kate wielded guilt as expertly as his mum sometimes. “I’m fine. Really.”

“At least consider it, as a favour for me. We could go up together, just for a day or two. Just… think it over. Please?”

“Fine,” Lucas said with a sigh. “I’ll think about it.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _sheepishly offers update after a million years_
> 
>  
> 
>  
> 
> I'm so, so sorry, my dears, for not updating Little Boy Lost sooner. Life threw a few curveballs at me and I had to focus on both myself and my family, so I wasn't working as much on Little Boy Lost. To be frank, I wasn't really in a good mental place _to_ add updates as I had a lot going on in my life and, honestly, as near and dear as Little Boy Lost is to me, it simply was not in my list of priorities. But, while I don't think I'm out of the woods yet, I _am_ doing better, so I'm hoping to get back on track with Little Boy Lost! I have about two thirds of the fanfic finished and am trying to finish it all up before October 1 (gotta prep for NaNo! ;) ), but we'll see how things go. Regardless of _when_ , I do intend to finish Little Boy Lost, so even if I disappear for a bit, rest assured I will return! I'm quite looking forward to finishing this, and I'm hoping you guys are looking forward to reading it! 
> 
> Anyway, I'm rambling now, so I'm going to wrap this note up and just say **thank you** so much for sticking with me this past month and a half and I'm so sorry again for not updating sooner.
> 
> As always, big thanks to Zen for beta reading this for me!
> 
> Much love,  
> SF


	15. Chapter 15

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For those that need the warning, sexy times happen in this chapter! I do try to avoid putting anything plot-heavy in these chapters, just because I don't want people feeling like they're missing out on important details if they are uncomfortable reading sex. So, honestly, once it gets to the kissing stuff, it's shameless PWP.

Ros stared up at the ceiling. This was pointless. She was too on edge after the news broke about Khordad and sleep was not forthcoming. Ros didn’t have to look at the clock to know that it was late and that she _should_ be asleep. And, yet, sleep continued to elude her. She draped her arm over her forehead as she glared at the ceiling. Ros hated that the cousins had gotten this one past her. It was bad enough when the Al-Qaeda successfully detonated a bomb in the marketplace, even if there had been no civilian casualties. Now the Americans had shot down an asset, a high-ranking one at that, and killed him. She couldn’t fault them for their desire to see the man dead – Ros certainly didn’t like the idea of Khordad walking about freely. But the fact remained that he was cooperating with MI-5 and could have helped to forge the path to peace talks.

_And, now, those peace talks would never happen_. She had no doubt that the Al-Qaeda’s revenge would be swift and decisive. Work was going to be hellishly busy soon and she was not looking forward to it. It would be one thing if it were just the Al-Qaeda that she had to worry about, but now there was this whole matter with Harry. He had been mysteriously absent during the first attacks and unreachable. She had acted as best she could and hadn’t balked at having to make decisions when she was told that the dry run was the real deal. But the fact remained that Harry should have been available and _wasn’t_. Add to that his mysterious meeting with Lucas after he had called everyone back to the Grid earlier, and Ros was wondering what secrets Harry was keeping from her. _It really is the old boys’ club all over again_ , she thought with disgust. Harry might have given her the section, but his actions spoke far louder than his words.

_Can we trust them? Even the most senior?_ Lucas’ words ran through her head. No matter what she thought about Harry’s absence, she trusted Harry. She had to. But she hadn’t missed the way he had said he needed a bit of air. Right. And she was the bloody Queen of England. There was something going on, something that she was not privy to, and she didn’t like it. And, somehow, Harry was in the centre of all of it. What if Lucas was right? What if Harry couldn’t be trusted? _No. He can be. Especially him_. She _needed_ to believe he could be trusted. _I was willing to die for him_. If she didn’t believe in Harry, then she would have to re-examine everything, and she just… wasn’t ready to face another betrayal from someone who she respected. She certainly would not doubt Harry simply because _Lucas_ was being paranoid and questioning Harry.

_This is futile_. It was getting her nowhere, except frustrated. She sat up in bed and huffed. On a whim, she texted the one person she suspected would be up at this hour still. Ros told herself sternly it was because she didn’t want to be alone with her thoughts. She was spinning in circles and, if she kept this up, she’d be convinced that Harry was secretly a FSB mole and was just waiting for an opportune moment to rain hell down on Section D. At least she could verbally spar with Lucas and trust that he would actually challenge her, if his sudden departure from averageness was anything to go by.

_What are you best at? Real thing or faking it?_ She remembered his words at the restaurant with a smirk, could remember each of his quips as if they weren’t facing death in the cupboard and hoping that cooking the bomb in the microwave wouldn’t hideously backfire. Bit by bit, Ros was chipping away at the smokescreen of averageness that Lucas had built around himself. She wondered if he even realized he was starting to slip up.

Her phone chimed and she took a moment to glance at it. She didn’t ask how Lucas knew her address; his text simply said that he’d be here in fifteen. _Good_. She needed a drink and she wasn’t eager to drink alone. Getting up, Ros got dressed. As much as she was certain Lucas would undoubtedly appreciate seeing her in her pyjamas, Ros did not feel like parading about her home practically naked with a man she wasn’t entirely convinced wasn’t a FSB mole.

She had finished getting dressed, pulled out two wine glasses and a bottle of red, and finished putting her dinner dishes away by the time Lucas knocked on her door. She took a deep, steadying breath. Ros wasn’t entirely sure why, but she felt sudden nervousness as she stared at the door. Ros had been the one to invite him here. It would be rude of her to leave him on her stoop, even if she did find him annoying and fully suspected _he_ would leave her on the stoop after inviting her over. Ros Myers was many things, but she refused to lower herself to his level. She was a diplomat’s daughter, which meant she excelled at making nice with people she thought were beneath her.

_This is ridiculous_.

Ros went to the door and opened it. It had started to rain while she was getting dressed and Lucas was half twisted away from the door, staring out into the night. She noticed he had his hands shoved deep into his pockets and that he almost seemed hunched over into his jacket, as if trying to minimize the amount of water that could touch his skin. She supposed she couldn’t blame him. Rain in London at this time of year was cold and it took quite a bit to rid oneself of that chill.

At the sound of the door opening, Lucas turned to face her. “Hey.”

Wordlessly, Ros stepped aside to let him in, not missing the way that he hurried inside with a backwards, worried glance at the rain. It was a brief look, but she caught it all the same and filed it away for future examination. Right now, she wanted someone to vent to that the cousins had gotten one past her.

“Closet is over there,” she said, pointing. Lucas lifted an eyebrow, but took the hint and hung his jacket up. He kicked off his shoes and leaned against the wall, seemingly waiting. The silence was awkward, to say the least. Now that he was here, Ros wasn’t entirely certain what she had been thinking inviting him over. She could hardly start hitting him, even though she desperately wanted to hit _something_ right now.

“So,” Lucas said, breaking the silence first. “Nice flat.”

Ros snorted. “As though you haven’t been in here before.”

He smirked. It looked genuine, full of mischief, and she tilted her head slightly at the look. It made him look… younger. Lighter. It was a look that she wouldn’t have expected on him, certainly not after his time in Russia. “Never. Perish the thought.”

“You are a liar, Lucas North,” Ros said. “Wine?”

“Only professionally.” He grimaced. “And only if you don’t have something stronger.”

“There’s nothing wrong with wine.”

“Only if you’re not Christian.”

Ros snorted again. She wasn’t exactly the religious sort, despite her mother’s best efforts. “I thought they used grape juice.”

“That’s for the kids,” Lucas said. “Wine is for the adults or rambunctious youths who happened to break into the church.”

“You broke into a church and drank their wine?” Ros asked, both eyebrows lifting. She wasn’t sure what she had expected Lucas to say, but it certainly wasn’t _that_. Knowing what she did of him – which, admittedly, was not a whole lot, to her annoyance – she probably _shouldn’t_ have been surprised that he had committed rather sacrilegious acts in his youth. Still, she would have thought that, if the bible shoved in his bedside drawer was anything to go by, Lucas would have _some_ reverence for God and His holy houses.

Lucas grinned at her. “I never said I did it.”

“Right, because you just _happened_ to hear of other rambunctious youths who broke into a church and drank the wine.”

“Exactly,” he said agreeably.

She sighed in exasperation, but still dug out the vodka that she kept for the odd occasion. “Will this do?”

Lucas took the bottle and turned it in his hands before he shrugged. She knew it was more expensive than the stuff he bought, but neither of them commented on that fact. “Sure.”

“Good. You can pour it yourself,” she said as she poured herself a generous amount of wine. If he was going to drink her vodka, he could serve himself. “Where’d you say this hypothetical church that you definitely did not break into is again?” she asked casually as she leaned back against the counter.

He had moved to the opposite side of the counter and was pouring himself some vodka when she asked her question. Lucas glanced up at her and shot her a rather annoyingly disarming smile. “I didn’t.”

“You’re right, you didn’t,” she agreed. “Tell me anyway.”

“No,” he said. All the mirth left his face, but it wasn’t the guarded look she had grown accustomed to seeing. Instead, he looked… serious, for a change. “You have your secrets. I have mine.”

“Your file doesn’t say where you’re from.”

“It doesn’t.”

“It also doesn’t list any next of kin,” she added, watching him carefully.

“Back off, Ros,” Lucas said coldly, his eyes flicking up to meet hers.

“How’d you get Harry to agree to that anyway? I’ve been trying to convince him for years that he doesn’t need to put my whole life in a file and have yet to convince him of anything. How’d _you_ get him to agree?” she continued, as if he hadn’t said anything. She took a sip of wine as she studied him closely. _Slip up. Slip up, I_ ** _dare_** _you_.

“I said please,” he said and downed his glass of vodka without even a cough. Lucas looked away as he refilled his glass.

“So did I.”

“I said it nicely,” he said. Lucas folded his arms across his chest. “So, I’m gathering you invited me over to interrogate me?” There was a hint of iron in his voice as he spoke that had Ros hesitating. In retrospect, trying to put Lucas on the defence in hoping that he’d let something slip hadn’t been one of her greatest plans. Lucas spent eight years on the defensive. If he truly hadn’t slipped up in prison, Ros rather doubted he’d slip up now. Still, he had given away more than he probably intended. There was something in his past, something about his family, that he wanted kept off the record, and he had enough clout with Harry to make sure that happened. _Good to know_. She’d have to watch Harry carefully, then. If she had learned anything after the whole incident with Ruth, it was that Harry wore blinders when it came to his favourites and she wasn’t eager to have a repeat performance. If Harry was going to be blind to any potential problems Lucas posited, then Ros would have to be vigilant.

She sighed. Normally, she wouldn’t so sloppy as to be caught trying to glean information, especially after she had glimpsed just what Lucas was capable of earlier. _I must be angrier about the cousins than I thought_. It didn’t help that Ros knew this was another failure on her part. First the explosion in the marketplace. Then the explosion in the restaurant. While it had been a faked explosion and there had been no casualties, she knew that the simple fact that they _had_ to fake the explosion would be seen as a failure in the eyes of men like Dolby. She couldn’t afford another misstep, not if she wanted to keep her job.

“No,” she said finally as she swirled her wine in her glass. “I asked you here because of Khordad.”

“Angry that the cousins offed him?” Lucas surmised as he pressed his forearms against the counter and leaned forward. The tension hadn’t entirely eased between them. He rolled the glass between his fingers and Ros felt an eye twitch. _He better not drop that glass_.

“Yes.”

Lucas nodded and stared down at his vodka. “Yeah. Me too.”

She put her glass down on the counter beside him and rested her elbows against the counter. “We should have expected they would have tried to kill him.”

“Yeah, we should have. But we weren’t officially detaining Khordad, so he was free to go as he pleased. He knew the risk.”

Ros looked up at Lucas. His face, all hard lines and sharp features, was guarded once more. His eyes said what his face did not. He was as angry as she was that the Americans had killed Khordad. There would be hell to pay. Maybe not today, maybe not even tomorrow, but there would be vengeance for this. The Americans had been too short sighted to see that Khordad was a chance to, if not stop, than at least slow the war on terror. And now, because they couldn’t sup with the devil, as Connie would say, MI-5 was looking at a potential retaliatory terror attack.

This was not going to be an enjoyable week.

Somewhere, between fuming thoughts about the cousins and studying Lucas’ face, Ros found herself kissing Lucas. It was awkward, both of them leaning over the counter, but no less heated. She wasn’t entirely certain who had moved first to initiate the kiss - although, she was fairly certain it _was_ her that had moved first - just that they were kissing and the counter was digging into her middle in a way that was not exactly sexy. Making an impatient noise, Ros quickly moved around the counter and surged against Lucas again, pressing herself to him as she twined her fingers into his hair and jerked his head down to another heady kiss. Lucas responded in kind as his hands gripped her hips and pulled her hard against him. She could already feel him starting to harden and it exhilarated her. The hand not holding Lucas’ head went to his waist, tugging his shirt roughly out of his jeans and frantically trying to undo the buttons one handed.

Lucas growled. There was nothing romantic about either of their kisses. It was full of tongues and teeth, punctuated with snarls and growls. Ros abandoned her attempts to undo his shirt and cupped his face roughly, fingers pressing tightly against the pale skin. She hooked a leg over his hip, rocking against him. Lucas snarled a curse. One hand splayed against the small of her back, simultaneously pressing her tightly to him and helping to balance her, as the other traced along the side of her face before he grabbed a fistful of her hair and jerked her head back. Ros hissed, but it lost some of its harshness as Lucas began trailing wet kisses and nips along her jaw and throat. She shivered and clawed at his shoulders. Lucas retaliated by biting with just enough force that she felt it, but not enough to bruise. _Good_. As much as she might like the idea of marking Lucas and had no doubt that he would return the favour, she would rather not deal with the entirety of Section D knowing they had just fucked.

Never one to be outdone, Ros shoved Lucas roughly back against the counter. He fell back with a grunt, taken by surprise. Confusion flitted across his face and his mouth opened, no doubt to offer an apology for presuming the kiss meant something more, and Ros was _not_ interested in hearing him apologize. Not about this, anyway. Not after Khordad and another failure on her part. Not when she wanted the distraction right now and they were both wearing far too many clothes for her taste.

Not breaking eye contact, Ros slowly unbuttoned her shirt, watching Lucas’ expression shift from confusion to unabashed lust as more and more skin was revealed. His tongue flicked out to lick his lips as she tossed her shirt to the side and, for a moment, Ros thought she saw _Lucas_. It was something that she had noticed about Lucas, that he was always hiding behind some mask, some personality that was carefully crafted to disarm with just the right mix of friendliness and snarkiness to keep anyone from looking too closely. It annoyed Ros to no end that it worked, even on her, even when she knew that there had to be some sort of steel beneath the friendly-snarky veneer, some sort of cunning that let him survive eight years in prison. There had to be _something_ about him that had Harry convinced he was one of the best field officers in MI-5, enough so that he would override his own caution to put Lucas back in the field. But, every time Ros thought she had Lucas figured out, he would do or say something that made her question just how well she knew him. Now, as she stood half naked before him, feeling his eyes rove over her hungrily, she wondered if this, too, was yet another façade of his or if this was what lurked beneath the various masks.

If it was, Ros wasn’t sure if she was turned on or frightened. There was a hungry look in his eyes that matched what she already knew from just looking at him – he definitely was enjoying the view, and he definitely seemed to want this as much as she did.

Just as Ros was about to reach out and start tackling his shirt again, Lucas came to the same conclusion and quickly undid and tossed his shirt to the side haphazardly. Ros surged against him again, ignoring the dark ink that stained his skin. There’d be time for that later. Now was not the time to examine the tattoos or to wonder what they meant. Her hands were going to his belt and Lucas’ hands went to her breasts, cupping and squeezing them through her bra. His thumbs swiped over her nipples. When her fingers grazed against his cock, Lucas snarled and spun them around. He lifted her easily onto the counter and, if she wasn’t so desperate to maintain contact with him, she would have loudly informed him that the counter was _not_ for having sex. But, she knew, _knew_ , that if she said anything, it’d break the spell over the two of them. It’d bring the world crashing down on them and the moment would pass into awkward apologies and with Lucas leaving and right now she needed this, needed to feel alive, needed to chase away the sobering thought that she had failed _again_.

She gasped as Lucas pulled her to the edge of the counter and pressed himself against her, pinning her in place as he started licking and sucking and nipping at her neck again and _fuck_ he knew what he was doing with that tongue of his. His hands ran along her arms before gently ghosting up her sides. She could feel him, hard, against her, and she wanted him in her _now_. She tried to convey her sense of urgency by wrapping a leg around Lucas’ hip and pulling him hard against her, but all she got for her efforts was a low growl.

Ros squirmed against him as his hands went back to her breasts. His mouth was teasing its way down her throat, her collarbone, and towards her breast. She scratched her nails up his back and into his hair, jerking his head roughly. He snarled again and, unceremoniously, shoved her bra out of the way and attacked her nipple with fervour. Ros gasped and tightened her grip in his hair as she held his head against her breast. Her other hand blindly tried to find the bra’s clasp. When she appeared to be struggling with it, Lucas simply reared back and ripped it from her body. Ros’ eyes narrowed at him and he gave her a quick, almost apologetic look before bending down to start sucking on her other nipple.

“I liked that bra,” Ros muttered, even as she felt her anger starting to dim in the wake of the pleasant sensation of Lucas’ mouth on her breast. His tongue was lapping incessantly against her nipple, each swipe sending jolts of electricity through her.

“I’ll buy you a new one,” Lucas growled, nipping once before dropping to his knees. Ros decided that she rather liked seeing Lucas on his knees in front of her, even more so when he made short work of her jeans. To her relief, he did not destroy her pants, opting instead to pull them down with her jeans.

“It was expensive,” she said, followed by a moan as Lucas kissed the inside of her thigh.

Careful application of teeth to her thigh was the only response Ros got from Lucas. She hissed, her hold on his hair only relaxing when he started teasing at her folds. His fingers trailed lightly along her hips, her thighs, back up to her hips, as he continued pressing teasing kisses to her labia. Finally, _finally_ he licked at her clit. Ros nearly shot off the counter at the contact. Soon, he was licking and sucking in earnest, drawing moans from her. One finger began to circle around her entrance, never quite pushing in though. Ros hissed again and jerked his head tighter against her. “Stop teasing,” she demanded, wriggling her hips in an effort to get Lucas’ finger where she wanted it.

Lucas didn’t bother with a reply, just gave her another gentle nip to her thigh that he quickly soothed away with teasing licks. Ros made a noise of frustration and scratched at his scalp. He pulled away from her, glancing up at her quickly, and licked his finger. Ros shivered, thinking it was entirely unfair how hot he looked wetting a goddamn finger. She felt one of his hands snake around her waist, angling her to give him better access and returned to sucking on her clit. His tongue was incessant, lapping roughly, sending hot spikes of pleasure through her.

His eyes flicked up to look at her again and, without looking away from her, slowly slid his finger inside her. Ros whimpered and tossed her head back as Lucas began pumping his finger in and out in time to his tongue’s movements. She could feel herself growing wetter, could feel her pleasure mounting as she rocked against him. A second finger joined the first and soon he was fucking her with his fingers as his tongue sped up against her. Ros bit her lower lip, trying to keep the pleased moans and whimpers in check. No need to stroke his ego _too_ much. She hooked a leg over his shoulder and started to stroke her nipple. She saw Lucas glance up and could _feel_ him groan against her as he increased his efforts.

Ros gasped. Lucas moved his hand from the small of her back to her arse, jerking her closer to him. When he slipped a third finger inside, stretching her, Ros moaned. _Christ_. His fingers moved in tandem to his tongue, working her into a mindless haze of pleasure. When his fingers found just the right spot, Ros cried out and scraped her nails against his scalp again. She could almost feel Lucas grin against her as he sucked hard at her clit. His fingers began angling for that spot over and over and Ros could feel her orgasm building as Lucas’ tongue worked fervently against her. When her climax washed over her, Ros’ hand tightened hard enough in his hair that she had to have hurt him, but he didn’t say anything, just rode her out. It wasn’t until she was gasping, trying to catch her breath that Lucas slipped her leg off his shoulder and sat back on his heels looking up at her hungrily.

“Condom,” Ros said, her voice hoarse, hoping Lucas had a condom on hand. While Ros knew she had condoms somewhere in the house, she hadn’t entirely finished unpacking and wasn’t certain where the condoms were. Not to mention, she didn’t trust her legs to hold her steady, so she stayed seated on the counter.

Lucas nodded as he got to his feet, pulling his wallet out of his back pocket. Ros took the opportunity to stroke his erection through his jeans. Lucas made a soft noise and retrieved the condom from his wallet before practically throwing the wallet to the side. She swatted his hands away from his zip, undoing it herself and pushing the denim down his legs. Lucas kicked out of his jeans as Ros snatched the condom from his hands and she was already ripping open the packet as he was pushing down his underwear.

She reached out with one hand, stroking Lucas, watching his Adam’s apple bob as he swallowed hard. When she swiped her thumb over his head, Lucas’ eyes fluttered shut and Ros decided she liked that so much that she did it again, and then she stroked him and ended the stroke with a firm squeeze at the head. Lucas moaned softly and leaned against her, panting softly as she worked him. After a few more strokes, Lucas snarled wordlessly and grabbed the hand holding the condom and plucked it out of her hands.

Ros glared at him and twisted her grip on his cock. Lucas uttered another curse and then he was pushing her hand out of the way to put the condom on himself. If she didn’t want him inside her as badly as he seemed to, Ros would have shoved him down to the floor and teased him more. But, right now, she wanted – _needed_ – to feel him inside her and Lucas seemed as eager as she did.

He repositioned himself so that he was pressed against her once more and she could feel his erection against her thigh, twitching at how close she was. Her arms went around his shoulders, carding her fingers through his hair again. When she felt his cock against her folds, teasing – _bastard_ – she tugged the short strands roughly. “Stop teasing and fuck me already,” she ordered, eyes narrowed.

“Planned on it,” Lucas muttered and Ros could have screamed at him for taking the time to snark her instead of fucking her.

Before she could say anything, Lucas shoved himself inside her, causing her to gasp. It had been awhile, long enough that, even with Lucas’ earlier ministrations, it still stung as he entered her. Lucas, for once, was considerate and was holding himself still, letting her adjust to the sudden feeling of fullness. She could feel his tension as he forced himself to stay still, to let her dictate when she felt ready for him to continue. Had she not been so tightly pressed against him, she might not have even noticed his faint tremors as he waited. His jaw was clenched tight and his eyes were closed, even as he pressed his forehead against hers. It occurred to her, as Lucas trembled with the need to move, that if it had been awhile for her, she could only imagine how long it had been for _him_.

After a few seconds, Ros used her grip on his shoulders to manoeuvre herself enough that she could wrap her legs around his waist. When she cupped his face and kissed him, it was all the encouragement Lucas needed because, with one hand clutching at her hip and the other bracing himself against the counter, he began to fuck her.

Ros wasn’t sure what sex with Lucas would be like. She thought he might be more… tender, from what she knew of his ex-wife and how sensitive Lucas seemed to be. Tender and sensitive weren’t exactly the words she would use right now. _Fucking_ was definitely more apt and, right now, she was perfectly fine with that. It took them a few tries to match thrusts, but, once they had found their rhythm, Ros could feel pleasure starting to build up again. Both of them were panting, animalistic groans falling from their lips. Later, she would take Lucas apart and properly enjoy the soft noises he was making as he roughly shoved into her. For now, she just enjoyed the feeling of fullness, enjoyed the feeling of his skin against hers, of his mouth on her breast again, his teeth scraping against her nipples.

She returned the roughness in kind. Her nails scratched furrows down his back, her legs tightened around his hips, and her teeth sank into his shoulder to stifle her cries. He hissed in pain, even as his thrusts increased in speed and his grip on her hips turned almost bruising. When his hand moved from her hip to stroke her clit, Ros nearly screamed. She grabbed the hand on her hip and dragged it up to her breast, squeezing his hand around her. Lucas was quick, she would give him that, because he quickly started pinching and stroking her nipple, the soft, gentle strokes a sharp contrast to the hard movement of his hips.

Ros wrapped herself tighter around Lucas, feeling her orgasm approaching, and panted his name into his ear. She gripped the back of his neck, trying to keep herself steady against his hard thrusts. Lucas groaned, low and deep, and she very nearly came from the sound alone. His hand switched to her other breast and the next thing she knew she was crying his name as she came hard. Lucas snarled and sank his teeth into her shoulder hard enough that she was certain he was going to draw blood as he followed her over the edge.

For a moment, neither of them moved, each content to stay tightly wrapped around one another. The only sound in the kitchen was their laboured breathing. Lucas pressed his forehead against hers and closed his eyes. Ros didn’t move, didn’t relinquish her grip on his shoulders, nor did she lower her legs from his waist. She knew, the minute one of them moved, they would come crashing back to reality. Ros knew Lucas wasn’t over Elizabeta. Anyone who spoke to him about her could tell he was still grieving over the breakup. And Ros… she had promised herself she wasn’t going to do this again. She had promised herself, after Adam and everything that had happened, she wasn’t going to get involved with another officer. It hurt too much to know that they might die or, worse, might become suicidal like Adam had and not realize it. She couldn’t do it again. She _couldn’t_.

“I think I like your interrogation tactics,” Lucas said, slightly breathless, breaking the silence once more.

Ros closed her eyes. She hadn’t intended to do this, hadn’t planned on jumping Lucas when he came to her flat. But she would be lying if she said that she didn’t feel better. When she reopened her eyes, she said, “Well, I’ll be sure to add it to my list of talents.”

He snorted and carefully withdrew from her. Ros nearly whimpered. He hadn’t been gentle, not even _close_ to gentle, and her body was informing her of just how _not gentle_ he had been. But it was a delicious feeling, one that had burned away much of her anger for the time being. She’d worry about the fact that she not only just had sex with a colleague – _again, after I promised myself never again_ – but that she had sex with a man she didn’t entirely trust later. For now… she felt wonderfully sore and at ease and that was good enough.

Lucas started gathering his clothes and tugged on his pants and jeans in silence. After a quick scan of the kitchen, he went and retrieved his belt. She wasn’t sure how she felt about his silence because, as she had suspected, the world had come crashing down upon them both. He knew as well as she did that this, whatever it had been, didn’t mean anything. It _couldn’t_. She didn’t trust him, and, after Adam…. She refused to go through _that_ again. And she was under no illusion. She had seen how Lucas had reacted when she only mentioned seeing if Elizabeta could find out anything from the FSB. He was still in love with his ex-wife and Ros wasn’t content to be the replacement as he tried to move on.

Still, she found herself not wanting him to leave. It was… surprisingly painful watching him search for his shirt in silence. She didn’t pretend to know what he was thinking, nor did she pretend to understand her irrational desire for him to stay. At the very least, she reasoned with herself, she could always try to instigate another sparring match and thoroughly beat him this time. Much, much easier to do when he was here, at her flat, than her having to track him down to spar with him before work. Besides, Jo and Ben wouldn’t be much of a challenge to spar against. No, she’d simply have to keep sparring with Lucas.

_And not at all because I want him to stay, or because I want to see another glimpse under that mask_.

“It’s raining,” Ros said as she watched him search for his shirt. In their haste to undress, their clothes had been flung haphazardly. She marvelled that they hadn’t knocked either of the wine glasses off the counter. Still, with Lucas half-dressed, she decided now was as good as any time to dress as well. She lifted the remains of her bra with a finger and stared at it. The clasp was broken. She scowled before dropping the bra in the garbage. _I liked that bra_.

Lucas paused and glanced out the window. “It is,” he confirmed with an annoying smirk. “With observational skills like that, you should be a spook.” He seemed to spy his shirt because he started moving towards the living room.

As he moved by her, Ros gently placed her hand on his arm. “Stay,” she said simply.

He paused, studying her face. She looked away first, focusing instead on the Cyrillic under her fingers. Running her fingers along his arm gingerly, she translated, “See nothing, hear nothing, and say nothing to nobody.” _How very Lucas_. “The FSB must have loved that one.”

Lucas smirked, even as his eyes took on a far-away quality. “Yeah. They did.”

“Stay,” Ros repeated again, looking back up at him. _I want to have someone to punch in the morning_.

—

At some point in the night, Ros felt her bed shift enough that it stirred her from her exhausted sleep. Lucas had done as she had ordered and had elected to stay the night. They had put an impressive dent in both her wine and her vodka before Ros finally decided to find the box of condoms and they relocated to her bed. She felt deliciously languid and sore and like she might actually make it through the day without screaming about the cousins and their idiocy.

Or, at least, she would have felt that way if the bed hadn’t shifted. There was no _possible_ way that Lucas was up for another round, and, even if he _was_ up for another round, Ros wasn’t so sure _she_ was. She was feeling quite content cocooned in her comforter and the rain pattering in the window only reinforced her desire to remain in bed.

She made a soft noise and felt, more than anything else, Lucas brush his lips against her temple and murmur for her to go back to sleep. “Don’t order me around,” was all Ros managed before she did just as he had suggested and slipped back asleep.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The usual, eternal love and thanks to Zen for beta reading this and not strangling me for my lack of confidence! And, because it occurs to me I haven't said it in awhile, thank you to everyone who has read, commented, and given kudos on this fic! <3


	16. Chapter 16

Something was _wrong_ when Ros fully woke up in the morning. The left side of the bed, the one Lucas had fallen asleep on, was empty. If it weren’t for the smell of coffee filling the house, Ros would have thought that Lucas had slipped out last night without saying goodbye. As it was, when she slid a hand over the other side of the bed, it felt cold to the touch. _Maybe I didn’t dream Lucas leaving_.

Frowning, Ros slipped out of bed. Her body ached and she had no doubt that there were bruises from Lucas’ fingers and mouth. She hoped he had done her the courtesy of making sure that the marks were in places that could easily be concealed. For now, though, the tantalizing scent of coffee was overpowering the need to see how much effort she would have to put in to hiding incriminating bruises.

She paused at the door long enough to fetch her housecoat off the hook and was just belting it when she walked into the kitchen. Lucas had his forearms braced against the counter and was in nothing but his jeans, sipping coffee from a mug. There was a far-away expression on his face and Ros got the distinct impression that, while Lucas might be standing there, in her kitchen, he was not entirely present.

It wasn’t often that Ros managed to sneak up on Lucas. He had an annoying ability to detect when he was being watched, and an even more annoying ability to draw attention away from himself. And, so, with Lucas distracted by his coffee or his thoughts or whatever held his attention, she took the opportunity to study him. Red welts from the previous night raked down his shoulders and back, but they weren’t enough to distract her from the tattoos or the scars that littered his back and shoulders. Ros was familiar enough with Russia that she knew there was an entire culture around prison and that the tattoos were symbolic, but she hadn’t exactly made a point of studying Russian prison culture. Some of Lucas’ tattoos were obvious enough, but others mystified her. She didn’t try to imagine what would have pushed Lucas to get the tattoos, even knowing that they would make him stand out more, thereby affecting his work. She didn’t want to think about the scars and what may have caused those.

The sound of the coffee maker, in combination with Lucas blinking, as if becoming abruptly aware of Ros’ presence, only confirmed what Ros already suspected. “Do I want to know how much coffee you’ve had?” she asked gently. She already knew that he had left her bed some time late last night. Surely he hadn’t stayed awake the entire time? An ugly thought dawned on her, one that she quickly quashed. It was one thing to see the dark circles under Lucas’ eyes and the far-away expression. It was another to muse on what might have been sufficient to keep him awake.

Lucas turned around and gave her a half-smile. “Probably not.”

She sighed. “Did you sleep at all?”

“A bit.”

“Forgot your shirt, did you?” she asked as she reached around Lucas to get herself a mug.

Lucas put his mug down and slipped his arms around Ros’ waist, pulling her to him. “No. I woke up last night and went for a walk. When I got back, I slept on the couch because I didn’t want to wake you.”

“You went for a walk in the middle of the night?” Ros asked sceptically.

“You don’t?”

“Most people sleep at night.”

“Fortunately, I am not most people.”

That was more like it. Ros could guess why Lucas had gone outside for a walk. She could even guess why he had chosen to sleep on the couch instead of returning to her bed when he got back. Hearing Lucas make quips, though, eased that knowledge somehow. It pushed away the ugly thought that maybe Lucas was more affected by what he had been through than he let on and that maybe his affable snarkiness was all an act designed to keep everyone from seeing the damage. She had said from the beginning that he was damaged goods, but, for once, Ros wasn’t happy to think that she may be right.

If it weren’t for the fact that she had expected as much, Ros would have felt disappointed that Lucas seemed to have put his walls back up, put the mask back on, and was hiding behind another façade again. And, really, what did she expect? She wasn’t about to suddenly be all chipper and warm and cuddly with him just because they had fucked last night. She didn’t trust him, plain and simple. He had been a means to an end, had been a rather enthusiastic distraction, nothing more, nothing less.

_He’s not Adam._

Ros slipped out of Lucas’ embrace and went about preparing her coffee. Khordad’s death, on the heels of Al-Qaeda getting one past her, had frustrated her. She had found an outlet that didn’t involve destroying her house. But how to tell Lucas that? She wasn’t interested in forming a relationship with him, not after Adam. Ros swore she wasn’t going to go through that again. She couldn’t.

“This doesn’t change anything,” Ros said as she finished stirring her coffee.

“Hm?” Lucas hummed as he glanced at her over the rim of his coffee mug.

“Us. What happened last night. It doesn’t change anything. I don’t trust you.”

“I’d call you a fool if you did,” he said affably. He was smiling, but she thought she saw something hard, something… not quite frightening – Ros Myers was not one to frighten easily, after all, and she wasn’t about to let _Lucas North_ , of all people, be one of the few people that successfully frightened her – but not exactly pleasant in his eyes. Whatever amusement had coloured his tone did not find its way to his eyes and it was disconcerting, to say the least. She didn’t like the idea that he very well could be as good as she was at hiding her thoughts.

Ros fixed Lucas with a look, but his walls were back up and his face remained unreadable beyond the steely glint in his eyes. “Well, then, now that that’s settled. Get out of my house.”

“And here I thought we’d go for breakfast together, maybe do a long walk around the Thames,” Lucas said as he pushed off from the counter and went to slip on his shirt.

She snorted. “More like I’d throw you into the Thames.”

“Well, at least breakfast is still on the table,” he said as he deftly finished dressing.

“Get out,” Ros said almost fondly.

He gave her a two-fingered salute and Ros nearly threw her coffee mug at him. _I will not waste good coffee on that asshole_.

She would, however, contemplate his rather graphic murder. Ros was still contemplating it when he slipped out the door.

As soon as Lucas was gone, Ros locked the door behind him – _not that it’d do much good if he decides he wants to come back in_ , she thought rather crossly – and immediately went about checking her slicks. While she liked to think that Lucas wouldn’t have been creative enough to find them, she also knew that anyone who specialized in counter-surveillance knew how to find hidden places. And with Lucas’ unwillingness to talk about why MI-5 didn’t have anything on him from before 1995, she wasn’t about to take any chances. He had gotten that much right - she _did_ have her secrets, and she’d rather not have Lucas knowing what they were.

Satisfied that her slicks were intact and undisturbed, Ros pursed her lips and stared hard at the counter as the memories of last night’s events played through her mind. She ran a hand through her hair. It had been foolish of her to have sex with Lucas last night. She didn’t trust him. More than that, she didn’t want to go through what she had with Adam again. Adam had been… tender, gentle almost. They had shared lazy mornings, warm smiles, laughter. She had loved him for it then. She wasn’t sure she was ready to have that kind of relationship again, not so soon after Adam’s death, and certainly not with a man that she didn’t trust.

With a glance towards the door, Ros bent down and fetched some cleaner from under the sink. Silently, she wiped down the counter.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Quick disclaimer as it occurs to me that I haven't actually stated this, so I figure I'll sneak it in here. ;) In what I'm sure will be a surprise to no one, I'm not actually British. While I have a sort of idea of some of the slang/terminology that the Brits use, I'm pretty certain I'm missing about 90% of the slang/terminology and/or using what I do know of incorrectly. So my deepest apologies to any UK readers if I'm using slang/terminology incorrectly. If you notice anything and are thinking, "Brits would def not say that," feel free to point it out to me so I can improve! :)
> 
> Also, I got the idea of slicks from _Burn Notice_ , which I'm told from tumblr (aka take with a grain of salt lol ;)) actually has decent spy-craft advice. The show defines slicks as a sort of hidey-hole that spies use to hide information. Ideally, slicks are easy to access, but well hidden. Whether they actually are a thing or not, I don't know, but I like the idea of them and I feel like both Ros and Lucas have 'em.
> 
> As per usual, eternal love and thanks to my awesome beta reader, Zen! <3 And, of course, eternal love and thanks to everyone who has read, commented, and/or left kudos! <3


	17. Chapter 17

Lucas sat at his desk, tossing a ball made of rubber bands into the air. He hadn’t missed this, the sitting around, the not doing anything, as he waited for something to do. Khordad’s plane shot down. It was ballsy, even for the cousins. They had to have known there would be repercussions. Surely they had already taken that into account? And they had to know that MI-5 wasn’t going to sit on its heels and stick its head in the sand and pretend the cousins hadn’t been responsible for Khordad’s death.

_Then again, when have the cousins been particularly far-sighted?_

He sighed and stared up at the ceiling. It was times like this that he cursed his drive to finish paperwork in a timely manner. Ros and Harry were briefing the Home Secretary. Jo and Ben were talking quietly at Jo’s desk. Malcolm and Connie were staring at their computer screens, completely engrossed. And Lucas? Lucas was just _bored_. He was a field officer. He could help monitor chatter, but, really, he was better suited to being out in the field, tracking down leads, speaking with assets, those sorts of things. Not… sitting at the Grid with nothing to do. He had already done his part, setting Kate on the warpath to get Lorie out of England. Now, he had… nothing to do but sit and wait for something to come up. Or at least he didn’t have anything to do for another hour. Tom had called him and said that they should meet up, which meant Lucas had some time to kill before he had to come up with a convincing excuse to leave the Grid without a chaperone. _Like that’ll happen_. More than likely, he’d have to shake the tail again. _Harry’ll love that_.

He sighed again, this time noisily. He wondered if he could get away with running down the street to grab a half-decent cup of coffee. The Grid’s coffee was garbage and, while he did have coffee stashed away in his desk, he also was eager to get off the Grid and out and about. Lucas had never been one known for his patience and, while he had vastly improved on that particular quality during his time… away, he still wasn’t the greatest at being patient when he was _bored_. He tried not to focus on the fact that the Grid almost felt… suffocating and that he needed to do _something_ before his carefully constructed control slipped.

Making sure that no one was watching, Lucas got up quietly and moved to Ros’ desk. More to annoy Ros than anything else, Lucas scanned her desk quickly before adjusting everything to be on the opposite side. Satisfied that her desk looked exactly as she had left it, only in reverse, Lucas glanced over his shoulder to make sure no one was the wiser. Everyone was still engrossed in their various activities, so he returned to his desk.

If Lucas was honest with himself, he was still smarting over her asking him to stay the night and then kicking him out in the morning. Not that he blamed her. Lucas himself wasn’t too sure what he was thinking last night. He certainly hadn’t been drunk enough – not even tipsy enough, really – to blame it on the alcohol. Just… bad choices, he guessed. For a moment, he had felt… normal. Human again. Like his life wasn’t fucked up, possibly beyond repair. Like he hadn’t lost everything, including himself, in Russia. He had _felt_ , and that was something he hadn’t experienced in a long, _long_ time. And, God, he really, _really_ needed to feel again.

At least saying it was bad choices didn’t leave him with a bitter taste in his mouth. When he had woken up beside Ros in the middle of the night, he had... it had… it had hurt. For a moment, even if it was for a second before he remembered where he was and what he had done, he had thought he was back home, that it was Vyeta in the bed beside him. When he had turned and saw Ros instead… it had _hurt_. He had felt… wrong. Like he had betrayed Vyeta by sleeping with Ros. It was stupid and he knew it. Things were over between him and Vyeta. She had made that perfectly clear to him. But, still, he hurt, and, still, he felt wrong. That sense of wrongness hadn’t eased after his walk, nor did it ease when he had moved to the couch.

Involuntarily, Lucas glanced at Harry’s door before turning his attention back to the rubber band ball. Ros had gone back to ignoring Lucas’ existence when she came to work today. She had made it clear that what had happened last night didn’t mean anything, which suited him just fine. Still, it stung that she had gone back to pretending he didn’t exist. He’d had enough of that in prison. He wasn’t eager to feel it here, back home, too. The minor mischief he had orchestrated against her desk was the least he could do to remind her that he existed, whether she liked it or not. _At least this time, I_ ** _can_** _remind someone I exist_. He closed his eyes and forced himself away from those memories. _Don’t go there. Not here._

Rationally, he knew it was petty to get into a feud with Ros. He knew that’s what she wanted. She had practically told him as such when she insisted on sparring with him. All he needed to do was give her an excuse and she’d have him benched at the very least. Lucas didn’t let himself think about what she’d do in a worst-case scenario. Still, it felt oddly satisfying to rearrange her desk.

 _Might even have to do it again some time_.

Finally, Ros stepped out of Harry’s office. From the expression on her face, Lucas would hazard a guess and say that the cousins were, naturally, denying all involvement in Khordad’s little plane accident. _Guess life is about to get interesting, after all_. If the Al-Qaeda knew Khordad had been in London and that he had reached out to MI-5, then Lucas suspected Britain was going to be in for an interesting few weeks.

Ros stopped at her desk and stared at it. Lucas continued to focus on tossing the rubber band ball in the air and catching it one-handed. Ros sat down at her desk and rested her palms flat against the metal. “Did you rearrange my desk?” she demanded, not looking up.

“Nope.”

“Liar.”

“Perish the thought.”

“Did you rearrange my desk?” she repeated, her voice flat.

“Nope.”

“Liar.”

“I just had the strangest sense of déjà vu,” Lucas said. “Didn’t we just go over this?”

“I’m not left handed.”

“Lucky you.”

“Why is my mouse on the left side of my computer if I’m not left handed?”

“I dunno, Ros. Why _is_ your mouse on the left side of your computer if you’re not left handed?” At this point, Lucas was deliberately being annoying and he knew it. He hazarded a glance at Ros and was pleased to see that she looked about as pissed off as she sounded. _Good_. Naturally, he didn’t let his surge of elation at having irritated her into admitting his existence show on his face.

“You bloody wanker. You rearranged my desk,” she hissed.

“Not sure how many more times I can tell you I didn’t touch your desk,” Lucas said. “I can say it in Russian if it’ll help. Maybe Latin? Oh, I know, how about Greek? Pig Latin? If you give me a few minutes, I’m sure I can open up Google Translate and try a few other languages.”

Ros snatched his rubber band ball while it was airborne. “You _bastard_.”

If Lucas had been a lesser man, he would have been inclined to make a crack about how that was most definitely _not_ what she had said last night. As a man with a _mostly_ good moral compass, Lucas elected not to comment on the fact that they had had sex last night. Instead, he got to his feet and plucked the rubber band ball from her hand. Given the fact that she had offered no resistance, he assumed she had decided to let him have it back.

“I’m going to go follow up on some leads and see about identifying the bombers,” he lied as he tossed the rubber band ball into a drawer. He was certain he could find something to do before meeting with Tom that didn’t involve sitting opposite a fuming Ros. “You have fun with your desk and finding the culprit.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ahhh I'm so sorry for not updating this in, like, a month! Life flared up again, so I had to unfortunately put LBL on hold to get my mental health back in check. Pro-tip for any cat parents out there: hair and kitty intestines do not mesh! This PSA brought to you by my dumbass cat, sigh. Both me and my cat are doing better (my cat is even rocking his new battle-scar with a very "look at my belly, isn't it rubbable, no don't rub it, how dare, now I must eat you" attitude, siiiiiiiiigh) and I am slowly plugging away at finishing LBL. New goal is to finish LBL by Thanksgiving (the Canadian one, that is ;)), because, to be 100% honest, unfortunately, I doubt I'll be able to finish it by the end of the month as I had initially intended.
> 
> Anywho. As always, big thanks to my lovely beta reader, Zen. And, as always, big thanks to you, my lovely readers, who have been so patient with me.


	18. Chapter 18

Lucas shoved his hands into his pockets as he leaned back against the decrepit, stone structure. The advantage to choosing the Thames Estuary was that it was remote and relatively unpopulated, especially at this time of year. If Gemma or one of Harry’s tails was following Lucas, he’d see them coming long before they could overhear anything important. The disadvantage, Lucas thought, was that it was bloody cold. The wind off the water was bitter and cut through him, sending a chill down his spine. He glanced out over the water as haunting memories of the last time he had gone for a walk in the bleak countryside played in his mind. Oleg had always insisted on speaking English with him, particularly when they were going for walks. Lucas had always thought it odd; Oleg knew that Lucas could speak Russian and all of his other interrogators, save for Kachimov, had spoken Russian to him. But not Oleg. Lucas never did figure out _why_ Oleg would insist on speaking English.

The sound of car tires rolling over gravel drew Lucas’ thoughts away from the past. He glanced up to the road and saw Tom get out of his car. Tom hesitated, scanning the countryside before Lucas stepped out of the structure and lifted a hand. The other man nodded and picked his way carefully towards Lucas. His caution made sense, Lucas supposed. Lucas’ father had taken him here a few times when he had been younger and Lucas had learned the terrain then. Years later, it had largely remained the same, but the large, loose stones made the walk treacherous to those unfamiliar with it; yet another reason why Lucas had chosen this specific location.

Finally, Tom dropped into the structure next to Lucas. “If you’re trying to get me killed, I can think of a few easier ways to do it,” Tom said. “I mean, the location is great. Scenery is beautiful, nice river there to throw a body into, lots of places for me to break my ankle. Great murder location. But, really. There are easier places.”

Lucas smiled thinly. “Gemma was spying on us last time.”

“Gemma Wright?” Tom asked. “I thought she was still heading Section B?”

“She is,” Lucas confirmed. “She came to my flat to give me the Polecat files and let me know that she had been watching.”

Tom poked his head out of the structure to look around. “Which is why you picked here to meet.”

“Yeah. Quiet. Remote. If Harry or Gemma are watching, they’re not going to hear much without us knowing they’re here.”

“Right,” Tom said as he looked back at Lucas. “You mentioned Gemma gave you the Polecat files?”

“She did,” Lucas said as he tilted his head. “She said that she and Harry didn’t find anything when they went over it.”

“Then why’d she give it to you?”

He shrugged. Tom’s question was one that Lucas had chewed over more than once in the past few months since Gemma had given him the files. He had worked for Gemma for two and a half years and, if there was one thing that Lucas knew about Gemma, it was that she didn’t do things without reason. She wanted him to have the files. She wanted him to come to the same conclusion that she and Harry had come to, that he hadn’t been burned. But _why_? If there really wasn’t anything to be found, why give him the files? To prove to him that there was nothing there?

“What’d she tell you?” Tom asked. He folded his arms across his chest when a particularly bitter wind blew through the structure.

“That she wanted me to come to the same conclusion she and Harry came to,” Lucas said. “That she and Harry went over the file and found nothing, that I had done everything right, but sometimes the best get caught.”

“She said that _exactly_?” Tom pushed.

“What are you thinking?”

“You know Gemma as well as I do, better, probably,” Tom said, trailing off. He glanced out of the structure again. “There has to be a reason why she just _gave_ you the file.”

Lucas was silent for a moment as he recollected his conversation with Gemma. _You did everything right. Sometimes even the best get caught. Neither one of us found anything. I’m going to let you come to the same conclusion that Harry and I came to_. Tom was right. Lucas knew Gemma and he knew that she didn’t do things just because. Did she want him to determine that he wasn’t burned? That the FSB just _happened_ to figure out who he was, where his safe house was, and what he did for a living? He was missing something, he knew he was. But _what_?

“She never said I _wasn’t_ burned,” Lucas said slowly. He looked up at Tom. “Her exact words was that she didn’t find anything and that she wanted me to come to the same conclusion she came to.”

“You think that she thinks you were burned?”

“I think that it’s awfully coincidental that the FSB knew my bloody name, where I would be, and that I had a code to tell Five that I was alright,” Lucas said. He swiped his hand along his lips. _Shit_. Was this what Gemma was trying to tell him? That there had to be something that she and Harry missed and that he might have the missing piece to figure it out?

Tom rubbed his jaw. “I’ve been looking into it and haven’t found a whole lot yet. I looked into Zoe and Danny and neither of them had the FSB connections to sell you out. Danny had some financial problems, but he never had any questionable, unexplained funds come into his bank account. I haven’t looked into Malcolm or Collin yet, but, honestly, I doubt either of them would have sold you out.”

“No, I don’t think it was Malcolm or Collin,” Lucas said. He hesitated. He hadn’t told Tom that the FSB had said that it was Harry. But, Harry’s unwillingness to tell him _anything_ , to even rebuff the FSB’s assertions, combined with his mysterious absences had doubt gnawing away at Lucas. Ros’ absolute belief in Harry, that Harry would never betray Lucas and that he had worked hard to bring Lucas home, meant shit to Lucas. He had eight years’ worth of reasons to at the very least _question_ Harry. But, did he _really_ think that Harry had been the one to sell him out? Harry had been the one to recruit him and had given Lucas a chance to _do_ something with his life. _Even if Harry didn’t sell me out, he sure as hell didn’t hurry to get me home_.

“Lucas?” Tom asked. “You alright?”

“The FSB said Harry sold me out,” he said finally. Lucas looked up at Tom and saw the surprised look on the other man’s face. “They said that he wasn’t in a hurry to get me back and that he had been the one to give them my name.”

For a moment, Tom said nothing. He looked outside again before facing Lucas again. “Shit.” He ran a hand through his hair. “Shit,” he repeated. “You don’t think that’s what Gemma meant when she said that you should come to the same conclusion as her? That maybe Harry…?”

Lucas hesitated. “I don’t know,” he said finally. He covered his mouth with his fingers before dropping his hand. “I don’t know. But the FSB knew too much about me for it to be a misstep on my part.” He paused. “They knew about Vyeta. They knew my name. They knew my position in Five. Hell, they even knew my middle name.”

“An inside job, then,” Tom surmised. “But Harry? You don’t really think Harry was the one that betrayed you?”

Lucas shrugged uncomfortably. “I don’t know. Maybe?” He hesitated again. He didn’t _want_ to believe that the FSB had told him the truth, that Harry was the one that betrayed him. He didn’t _want_ to believe that the man he looked up to like a goddamn father was the one that put him through hell for eight years. But Lucas knew Harry. It wouldn’t have been the first time that Harry had to make a difficult decision that resulted in an officer’s death. Harry had horse-traded to get Lucas back, had used the Russians’ embarrassment to strong arm them into returning Lucas. But what if… _It’s possible_. Eight years ago, maybe the Russians caught wind of something and forced Harry to give Lucas up. Maybe. He hoped that was the case. The alternative was… not pleasant to think about.

Of course, even if Harry _had_ been forced to give Lucas up, the fact remained that he had left Lucas in prison for _eight years_. Surely he had known that Lucas was alive? Surely Harry had known what the FSB were doing to him? Harry had the clout to get what he wanted, Lucas knew that. Hell, he’d _seen_ Harry use his connections and resources to get what he wanted. If Lucas was in prison for eight years, it meant that either Harry deemed Lucas unworthy of the cost or… _No. No, Harry wouldn’t have just_ ** _left_** _me there. Would he?_ Lucas ran a hand through his hair.

“I’ll look into Harry,” Tom said quietly. “I’ll see if I can find something that proves one way or the other.”

“Thanks, mate,” Lucas said. It was an inside job. Someone in Five had burned him. He didn’t _want_ to think it was Harry, but everything suggested it _was_. _Is this what Gemma wanted me to find? Proof that Harry is a mole?_ Or was Gemma trying to mislead him? _No_. Gemma wouldn’t have burned him, not after putting as much effort into training him as she had. She had risked a lot using her influence to _gently encourage_ Harry to promote Lucas. She wouldn’t have thrown it all away by selling him out to the FSB. Lucas knew Gemma. She _wouldn’t_ have burned him. _But, then again, I thought I knew Harry, too, and yet here I am, considering the possibility that it was him that burned me_.

Tom nodded. “So, just so we’re in agreement. We don’t think Gemma actually believes that you slipped up?”

Lucas shrugged. “I think she has her own agenda and that I should speak with her again.”

“That sounds like an excellent idea. I’ll text you if I find something. Or if I break my ankle trying to get back to my car.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> My usual! Thank you thank you thank you to Zen for beta reading, thank you to my lovely readers who have left kudos and comments. And a big thank you/shoutout to my mom, who binge-read the past seventeen chapters in the last two days, and has not (out-loud) judged me for the slightly-more-than-PG-13-rated-scenes. ;)


	19. Chapter 19

Ros sat down in her chair, her hands splayed on her desk as she looked over it. Everything was back in its proper place. _Bloody wanker_. No matter what Lucas insisted, she _knew_ it had to be him. No one else on the Grid had the nerve to touch her desk, much less move _everything_. She pursed her lips. Really, these childish pranks were starting to get out of hand. First the gift-wrapped desk at Christmas time, no doubt in retaliation for her stun gunning him, and now this, after she had informed him that the sex last night hadn’t changed anything between them. Clearly, she had made a mistake in assuming he was a big enough boy to handle hearing that. _Then it is simply a mistake that I won’t make again_.

Satisfied that her desk was in order again, Ros checked her watch before glancing at the pods contemplatively. Lucas had left five minutes ago and said he was following up on some leads, which meant he likely wouldn’t be back for an hour or two. She had her own lead that she wanted to follow up on and she rather doubted Lucas would approve of it if he knew. _All the more reason to do it_.

Glancing at Jo and Ben, who were filling out reports for the operation, Ros got up and wordlessly stepped out of the pods. Section B wasn’t far from where Section D was headquartered and, within a few minutes, she was standing in Section B. Their office looked much like Section D’s with desks pushed together and people filing their own reports. Where Section D focused on counter-terrorism, Section B focused on personnel training. And, it was headed by a previous Section Chief of Section D, the one that had been in charge when Lucas had first been recruited.

“Ros Myers, I presume,” a tall, black woman said as she extended her hand towards Ros. “Gemma Wright. We spoke briefly on the phone this morning.”

Ros smiled and took Gemma’s hand. The introduction was unnecessary. Gemma had her dark brown hair swept tightly into a neat bun and carried herself with a sense of confidence that likely came from many years spent in the Service. “Yes, of course. I was hoping to speak with you in private,” she said, glancing around the room again.

“I trust my office will suffice?” Gemma said, gesturing to an office that looked very similar to Harry’s.

“Yes, if you wouldn’t mind,” Ros said and followed Gemma into the office. While the layout was much the same, Gemma had styled her office differently from Harry’s and had added a few personal photos of her and another woman. A chessboard sat unobtrusively in the corner, the pieces arranged as if she and her opponent had stopped in the middle of their game. Some bookshelves were behind the simple, yet elegant desk. Ros wondered if Gemma also kept a bottle of whisky in one of the drawers. Like Harry’s office, two chairs were splayed opposite Gemma’s seat, and a simple, yet comfortable-looking couch sat along the wall.

Gemma shut the door behind them and gestured for Ros to take a seat. She noticed that Gemma didn’t sit at her chair. Instead, Gemma had leaned back against her desk, crossing her legs at the ankle. “What can I help with, Ms. Myers?”

Ros leaned back in her chair. “I was hoping to speak with you about one of your previous colleagues.”

Gemma tilted her head and smiled. Ros noticed that the mirth did not quite reach her dark eyes. Instead, there was a… steel to them, almost as she silently appraised Ros. _I’d expect nothing less from someone of Gemma’s supposed calibre_. Her reputation was _almost_ as illustrious as Ros’, after all. “I’m afraid you’ll have to be more specific. I’ve worked with a lot of people, you see,” Gemma said apologetically.

“Lucas North,” Ros said.

The other woman nodded slowly. She seemed to think for a moment before saying, “My, you _are_ asking me to go back. I remember him, though.”

“I hoped you would.”

Gemma smiled thinly as she pushed off her desk. Sitting down in her chair and folding her hands on top of her desk, she asked, “What can I help with?”

“I was hoping you might be able to provide some insight into what he was like as an officer.”

Gemma laughed. “He was a pain in the arse. If memory served, he was good, but he had problems following rules. Brilliant officer, otherwise.”

Ros pursed her lips and looked down at her hands for a moment. _Nothing I didn’t already know_. She wondered if that was deliberate on Gemma’s part, or if that truly was all Gemma could remember about Lucas. Ten and a half years was, admittedly, a long time to go back, but Ros would have thought that someone as annoying as Lucas would have been… memorable. And, in any case, one did not get to where Gemma was in her career by being bad with names and faces. “He was your successor,” Ros pointed out.

“He was,” Gemma agreed. “I hear he did quite well at the job, too.”

“You didn’t keep in touch with him after he was promoted?”

“Ms. Myers, my hands were rather full running my own section to be busy keeping tabs on another section,” Gemma said, almost apologetically. If Ros hadn’t specialized in undercover work, she might have even believed the apologetic note in Gemma’s voice.

“How’d he get promoted over more experienced officers?” Ros asked. “His file said that he had only been with the Service for two years before he was promoted….”

Gemma smiled. “As I said, Lucas was an excellent officer. One of the best I’ve worked with, honestly. I’m certain that Harry felt the same and gave him the job for that reason.”

Ros tilted her head. The other woman was good, Ros would give her that. Gemma Wright was a well-known name in the intelligence community and had built a reputation for being a chess master that excelled at getting what she wanted, often without the other party any wiser until it was too late. She had mastered the art of drawing attention to one hand while the other moved in the shadows, pushing pieces into place. Ros just couldn’t tell which hand she was being offered. She very much doubted that Lucas was given the promotion simply because Harry thought he was good at the job. _Isn’t that how_ ** _I_** _got the job, though?_ Harry had promoted her because she was good at what she did and there had been no one else. Had Lucas been the same? _Surely there would have been_ ** _someone_** _better suited than a kid with only two and a half years of experience?_

“Is that all?” Gemma asked after a moment.

Ros smiled again. “I have a few more questions, if you don’t mind.”

“Not at all,” Gemma said, gesturing towards Ros. “Anything to help.”

“Did you trust him?” Ros asked. It was direct, but Ros had a feeling that, had she asked the question any other way, Gemma would find a way to dodge the question. And, Ros wanted to gauge just how much Gemma trusted Lucas. She already knew Harry had his blinders on when it came to Lucas. She wanted an unbiased, second opinion on what Lucas had been like and if he had shown any signs that maybe he wasn’t what he said he was. And, if Gemma _did_ have blinders where Lucas was concerned, then Ros would know to be even more wary of him. After all, anyone that could con not just one, but _two_ Section Heads was someone that Ros wanted to keep a _very_ close eye on. _Particularly when there’s a very good probability that he’s turned_. Lucas might have convinced Harry by handing him Kachimov, but Ros didn’t get to where she was by believing everything she saw.

“Implicitly,” Gemma said firmly, without hesitation. She looked at Ros directly. “Why?”

Ros smiled thinly. “I’m sure you know that he was recently returned to us?”

“I heard as much, yes,” Gemma confirmed. When Ros opened her mouth to ask another question, Gemma cut across her and said, “If you’re concerned that the FSB turned him, allow me to assure you that they didn’t. I know Lucas. You won’t find someone more loyal to Harry, to MI-5, than Lucas North.”

Ros schooled her features carefully, hiding her frustration. She didn’t share Gemma’s conviction that Lucas was loyal to Harry. Gemma hadn’t been privy to her and Lucas’ conversation about if Harry could be trusted and didn’t know that Lucas was questioning Harry. _If you knew that he questioned Harry, would you still trust him?_

“Of course,” Ros said amiably. No matter what intel the question would have given her, she wasn’t about to show Gemma all of her cards. “I also had a question about his file.”

“You’re a curious one, aren’t you?” Gemma asked. Her tone was jovial, but her eyes told a different story, and Ros had the distinct impression that she was being sized up. _I’m not as easy to chew up as one might think_ , Ros thought coldly as she held Gemma’s stare. If Dolby couldn’t intimidate her, then she certainly wasn’t about to be intimidated by Gemma Wright, no matter what the intelligence community had to say about her. After all, Gemma wasn’t the only one with a reputation in the Service.

“One of my many personality quirks,” Ros quipped. “About his file?”

“Yes, of course.”

“There’s some missing information. I was hoping you could help fill in the pieces?”

Gemma lifted an eyebrow. “Are you suggesting MI-5 did not thoroughly vet him?”

“No,” Ros said. “I’m suggesting that there’s nothing in the file before 1995 and I’m _assuming_ Lucas didn’t just pop out of the ground, fully grown, at age twenty. He has no next of kin. No parents. No siblings. No family. No birthplace,” Ros pressed. “Surely you would have done a background check on him when he was recruited and discovered that information?””

Gemma steepled her fingers and said in a reproachful tone, “Ms. Myers, while I admire your dedication to ensuring that Lucas has not betrayed his country, I assure you, these… _missing pieces_ in his file are likely missing for a reason. Harry had Lucas thoroughly vetted and, if there was anything in his past that would have raised suspicion, it wouldn’t be missing from his file, now would it? So, if there _is_ something missing in Lucas’ file, I would suggest you respect that fact. After all, I’m certain no one in Section D is without their own skeletons that they would prefer to be kept private.”

The threat was thinly veiled. Even Malcolm would have been able to pick up on it, Ros thought. But, the threat also told Ros more than she was certain Gemma meant to tell her. Whatever was in Lucas’ past, Harry knew about it. Likely, Gemma knew it too. Ros rather doubted that Gemma would have been the type to remain blissfully in the dark about officers under her direction. _So why are you hiding it?_ What was so important in Lucas’ past - _or damning_ , Ros thought - that he had both Harry and Gemma willing to omit it from his files, even at the risk of national security? If the FSB _had_ turned Lucas, knowing who his family was could help MI-5 get him to roll over on his new bosses.

“Of course,” Ros said, smiling. It was a practiced smile, one she had learned from her parents growing up. _Smile, so no one knows when you’re about to make your move until it’s too late_ , her father used to tell her. “I’m just concerned, that’s all. I’m sure you understand?”

Gemma tilted her head in acknowledgement. “I do, but, as I said. Lucas is loyal to Harry Pearce. While I admit, I haven’t spoken to him since he returned, I know Lucas. He didn’t turn in prison. If anything, he probably annoyed his captors into releasing him.” Gemma placed her hands on her desk and stood up. “Now, if there’s nothing else, I’m afraid I have to go to a meeting soon.”

Ros stood up as well and offered her hand to Gemma. “Thank you for your time and insight. I appreciate it.”

Gemma took her hand. “Not a problem at all. If you have any further questions, you know my number.”

 _Indeed, I do. Not that it’ll help_ , Ros thought sourly as she slipped out of Gemma’s office and began making her way back to the Grid. She hadn’t been given anything that would help her with figuring out just how big of a threat Lucas might be that she didn’t already know. It didn’t help that she still couldn’t decide if Gemma was about to tell Lucas about their little meeting or not. She knew it would be a risk, talking to Gemma, and that Gemma very well _could_ tell Lucas about their conversation. But, assuming that Gemma had been more-or-less truthful, Gemma hadn’t spoken to Lucas since he got back. _How likely is it that she was telling me the truth about that, though?_ It bothered her that she couldn’t decide.

Ros still hadn’t reached a decision by the time she made it back to her desk. Lucas still wasn’t back yet, so Ros’ desk was blissfully untouched. In the end, she decided it didn’t matter. If Gemma told Lucas, then Lucas simply knew that Ros was looking into him. If Gemma didn’t tell Lucas, then he would be none-the-wiser. Either way, she would continue trying to determine if the FSB had found something in his past that could turn him and, if they had, _what_ , exactly, that had been so that _she_ could use it to roll Lucas back over.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I did not achieve my goal of finishing _Little Boy Lost_ by today. :( An effort was made, a lot of turkey and ham was consumed, and the story did not end up finished. I'm hoping to kick the writer's block by trying something different and _hopefully_ I'll have this done sometime in the next little while! I _may_ have to put _Little Boy Lost_ on hold to work on NaNo. It shouldn't affect my updates _too_ much as I do have some scenes written out ahead of where we're at on AO3, but I will let you guys know if I think NaNo will affect updating AO3.
> 
> Happy day of much turkey to my fellow Canucks!
> 
> As usual, eternal thank you to Zen for beta'ing, eternal thank you to my lovely readers for reading, commenting, and/or leaving kudos. It is all much appreciated! <3


	20. Chapter 20

Lucas walked through Hyde Park with his hands in his pockets. While he knew _exactly_ where the damn _Jelly Baby Family_ sculpture was, he was still in disbelief that Gemma would choose _there_ , of all places in the bloody park, to meet. He’d seen a lot of things since he had moved to London. Unfortunately, the _Jelly Baby Family_ was a rather memorable sculpture that would undoubtedly be haunting his dreams when he was on his death bed. Naturally, Gemma had chosen _that_ sculpture to meet at. He was starting to think she knew his thoughts on the sculpture and that it had been a deliberate choice on her part, no doubt to spite him for inconveniently getting arrested in Russia.

Shaking his head as he finally spotted the towering purple and blue jelly baby sculptures, Lucas picked his way over. Gemma was standing next to the sculpture, looking up at the monstrosity with a faint smile on her face. As soon as Lucas was close enough to hear, she said, “You’re late.”

“And you picked the most terrifying statue to meet at,” Lucas retorted. “Honestly, if you were trying to give me nightmares, you’ve succeeded.”

“It’s cute,” Gemma said and reached out a hand to touch the green child jelly baby.

Lucas lifted an eyebrow. “You and Jackie thinking of adopting?”

“Thinking, yes,” Gemma said. “But we haven’t decided anything yet.”

“You’d be a great mum. Just don’t bring the kids here. They’ll never sleep again.”

Gemma laughed and Lucas smiled. He tried not to think of Vyeta and how she had wanted kids. Lucas had always been on the fence about kids. She was a teacher and worked with kids all the time, which made her want one all the more, where Lucas…. At the time, he thought it was because he didn’t want to be like his own father. He didn’t want to be the father that was never there because he was always at work or because someone else always took precedence over his family. If Lucas was going to have a kid, he wanted to _be_ there for that child and he just… couldn’t guarantee that he’d make it home for dinner on time, much less _be_ there for his child. If Lucas had a child, his child would grow up wishing for a father that was never there, and all Lucas would be able to say was ‘sorry.’ At least John had his reasons for not being home. It took Lucas going to prison to realize and forgive his father for those reasons. He rather doubted - and fervently hoped against - that, if he were to have a child, his own child would have that same opportunity for… self-reflection.

For a moment, neither of them said anything. “You wanted to meet?” Gemma asked as she folded her arms across her chest.

Lucas blinked. The jelly babies were clearly getting to him, if he was starting to think about children and Vyeta. _I made my choice. Live with it_. “I had a few questions.”

“Only a few?”

Lucas nodded his head once. “Well, for starters, I’d like to question your taste in art.”

“I hope that you didn’t call me away from work to tell me you don’t like the jelly babies.”

“I didn’t, but I want you to know I don’t like the jelly babies,” Lucas said, giving them another dubious glance. _Judging wankers_.

“Duly noted. You’ll find it with all the other complaints men have told me,” Gemma said with a smile.

Lucas snorted. “Just don’t put it next to Albert’s. It’ll never be seen if you put it next to his complaints.” The wind picked up again, causing Lucas to shiver and pull his arms closer to his body. _Next time,_ ** _I’m_** _picking the meeting place and it’s not going to be at a terrifying, multi-coloured statue of jelly babies_.

Gemma didn’t seem bothered by the cold. “What can I help you with, Lucas?” Gemma asked, the mirth gone from her voice.

He hesitated. _Do I really want to do this?_ He knew that Gemma was playing a game, that she had some kind of agenda and Lucas was a pawn in the game. But he couldn’t figure out _what_ that agenda was. Gemma had been a spook for a long time and she had taught him a large part of what he knew. She was as much a chess player, if not more so, than Kachimov had been. The only difference, Lucas thought, was that Gemma could move the pieces about without them any wiser. Lucas knew what Kachimov was doing, had known as soon as Kachimov first started planting the seeds that someone had sold him out. _And look at where it’s gotten me. Questioning everyone I’ve worked with. Questioning_ ** _Harry_**. Lucas had to know, though, and Gemma was his best bet.

“Polecat,” Lucas said finally.

Gemma nodded once. “I take it you’ve looked through the file?”

“Several times.”

“And?”

“And I didn’t find anything, either.”

Gemma pursed her lips and Lucas had the distinct impression that he had answered incorrectly. “Then?” she asked, finally.

“Why did you give me the file?” Lucas asked quietly. She looked at him, her dark brown eyes unreadable. When Gemma didn’t answer, Lucas said, “You gave me the file for a reason. _Why_?”

“I told you -”

“That you think I slipped up, yeah, I know,” Lucas said. He ran a hand through his hair. “But why give me the file if you think I slipped up? Did you just want to prove to me that I fucked up and went through hell because of it?”

Gemma waited for Lucas to finish before calmly asking, “Are you done?”

He glared at her, feeling much like an errant child again. When she didn’t say anything further, he muttered, “I guess so.”

“Good. I never said you slipped up.”

“But you said -”

“I said I would let you come to the same conclusion Harry and I had come to,” Gemma said, waving a dismissive hand. “Which is that you didn’t make a mistake.”

“Then _why_? Why was I caught? What did I do wrong?” Lucas asked plaintively. He swallowed hard. It was one thing to _think_ those questions for eight years, to play each and every goddamn _minute_ of that day over and over and over in his head during the long periods of solitude. It was another to give them voice. He pressed his hand to his lips for a moment before dropping it again.

“I believe that MI-5 has a mole,” Gemma said. “And I think that you have pieces Harry and I are missing.”

Lucas frowned. “You think the FSB told me something?”

Gemma smiled enigmatically. “I didn’t say that either.”

“I didn’t miss this.”

“Liar,” Gemma said, still smiling. “I would have expected you, of all people, to at least appreciate the value of word choice.”

Lucas smiled, in spite of himself. She was right, he _had_ missed this mental chess game with Gemma. It was always thrilling, particularly when he figured out her angle and was able to outmanoeuvre her, but he would be the first to admit that that didn’t happen too often. Gemma was far better at manipulating than he was. He’d be damned if he told her that he missed this, though. “Don’t suppose you have any idea who our mystery mole might be?”

“If I did, I wouldn’t have given you the file.” Somehow, Lucas believed her on that.

He hesitated again. The wind had picked up again and he had the feeling that the jelly baby sculptures were judging him for even _thinking_ of asking Gemma if it was possible that Harry had been the one to sell him out. _First they judge me for not wanting kids, now they’re judging me for questioning Harry. What’s next? Judging me for how I take my coffee?_ The statues were clearly getting to him, he thought, so he turned his back to them and looked out over the park. Everything seemed… quiet. Serene. Like it was the calm before the storm. He hoped that wasn’t the case.

“Be honest. Who do you think sold me out?” Lucas asked.

Gemma tilted her head slightly. “Honesty comes at a price in our trade, Lucas. Are you sure you want that answer?”

“No, but tell me anyway,” Lucas said, looking at her.

She nodded once. “It had to be someone who had access to operational details.”

“Anyone in Section D,” Lucas surmised. It didn’t… exactly exclude Harry. But it wasn’t an outright admission that she thought Harry was the mole. _She’s too good for that, though_. If Gemma thought Harry was responsible for Lucas’ internment, she wouldn’t say as much, not to Lucas, of all people.

Gemma shrugged. “Or someone that was working in joint operation with Section D. It could have also been anyone with the appropriate level access.”

“Section Chief or higher?” Lucas asked.

“Section Chief or higher,” Gemma confirmed. She glanced at her watch. “I’m afraid I have to get back. If you find anything else, you’ll call, right?”

“Of course,” Lucas said, smiling. _Eventually_.

Gemma smiled. “You always were a good liar, Lucas North.”

His smile widened. “Me? Lie to you? Never.”

Gemma chuckled. She brushed past him before pausing and turning back to him. “Oh, and Lucas? Someone seems very interested in you.”

“Oh?” Lucas asked, glancing at Gemma.

“Ros Myers came to visit me and had a few questions about you and your file. She was concerned that there’s something serious in your past.”

Lucas made a face. He should have guessed that Ros wouldn’t leave well enough alone. “What’d you tell her?”

“That you were annoying and a pain in the arse.”

He snorted. “Downgraded me, did you?”

“I could hardly tell Ms. Myers that I still remind Harry every chance I can that he foisted you on me and that you were simultaneously the best and worst officer I’ve ever had to deal with. I did, however, consider telling her that you were the bane of politicians and that you were fond of ignoring orders every chance you could, but I thought I’d let her discover those delightful aspects of your charming personality for herself.”

Lucas grinned again. _At least some parts of me haven’t changed_. After all, he still ignored orders that he thought were stupid. He was just… smarter about it now, he supposed. Back then, he’d been too green to know how to _properly_ ignore orders. “Thanks.”

Gemma smiled and touched a hand to his arm. “She’ll stop asking if you tell her, you know. Harry agreed to keep your family off the books and to make your juvenile record disappear when you joined the Service. You had good reasons then, and you have good reasons now, but she’s convinced you’re hiding something bigger and she doesn’t quite strike me as the type to let things lie.”

“Yeah, I know,” Lucas said. He looked at the judging jelly babies again. Gemma was probably right. _Scratch that, she_ ** _is_** _right_. He could tell Ros that he had requested that Harry remove any mention of Lucas’ family from his files. He grew up in a small village. If people knew even where he was _born_ , they’d be able to find his parents and use them to get to him and _that_ was something he refused to allow to happen. It was one thing to knowingly and consciously put himself at risk. It was another to put his family at risk without ever telling them _why_. “But I’d rather not. Not until I know….”

Gemma nodded. “I understand.”

“Besides, it’s amusing seeing her be irritated that she can’t figure out what I’m hiding,” Lucas said.

“As charming as ever,” Gemma said with a chuckle. “She’s going to kill you when she finds out.”

“She can join the line.”

The mirth drained from Gemma’s face. “Be safe, Lucas,” she said quietly. “I worked hard to train you and Harry worked just as hard to get you back, so please don’t get yourself killed.”

Lucas pointed up at the jelly babies. “They’ll be disappointed in me?”

“Exactly,” Gemma said, the smile returning to her face. She gave his arm a gentle squeeze of farewell before turning to leave.

“Say hi to Jackie for me,” Lucas said as Gemma left. “And, remember, don’t bring the kids to the jelly babies statue.” She lifted her hand in farewell.

Lucas gave another misgiving look to the jelly babies before scowling at the trees. He had a long walk back to the car and planned to make the most of that time mulling over everything Gemma had told him. _At least Gemma was mostly straightforward this time. I hope_.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As usual! Many thank yous to my amazing beta reader, Zen. Many thank yous (and love! Lots of love!) to my amazing readers. Many thank yous and love to those who have commented and left kudos! <3


	21. Chapter 21

Ros was scowling when she opened her door. Today had not been nearly as fruitful as she had hoped. Gemma hadn’t been helpful. Lucas’ leads on the bombers didn’t go anywhere. Jo and Ben had been not-so-mysteriously absent for a few hours getting “coffee” - she made a mental note to remind Jo and Ben that, while she didn’t _care_ if they were being intimate, she’d rather they _didn’t_ do it at work, even on slow days. Harry had another one of his mysterious absences. When he had returned, he hadn’t told her where he’d been, which only served to frustrate her more. All in all, Ros left work with more questions than she had answers.

Shutting the door behind her, Ros closed her eyes as she leaned back against the wood. A hot bath with a glass of wine seemed like a good way to unwind after an all-around frustrating day. She closed her eyes and took a deep breath. _Tomorrow is another day_. She would find the Al-Qaeda bombers and she would make them pay. _But first, wine. And a bath_. Opening her eyes, Ros flicked on the light and stepped into the living room before pausing.

She had never been one for decorations. Her house was unadorned and everything had its place. The coffee table, which was usually bereft of personal effects, had a thick book on top of some papers. She frowned. _I’m reasonably certain I did_ ** _not_** _leave a book on the coffee table_. Glancing around the flat, Ros inched towards the fireplace and pulled out the gun that she kept hidden there.

Weapon in hand, Ros methodically searched her house. With the exception of the book on the coffee table, nothing else was amiss. Making her way back to the living room, Ros sat on the couch and put the gun on the coffee table. The book, a dictionary, was a plain one, but the spine looked unbroken, suggesting it was new. Two yellow tabs stuck out, bookmarking two pages in particular. Fetching her letter opener, Ros gingerly lifted the pages before the first tab. Nothing sprayed out at her. _Thank God for small mercies_. Scanning the page, she found the word “back,” along with the definition, highlighted in yellow. She didn’t bother with the letter opener for the second tab. Flipping to that tab, she saw the word “off,” and its definition, also highlighted in yellow. _You wanker_ , Ros thought as she tossed the dictionary into the unlit fireplace. _Maybe I’ll have a nice fire tonight after my bath_.

If nothing else, at least now Ros knew that Gemma was in Lucas’ pocket, which made Ros question everything Gemma had told her that much more. When she had left Gemma’s office, Ros fully suspected that Gemma knew more than she was letting on. Now, Ros considered the dictionary on the table to be proof that the other woman had deliberately held back information about Lucas. Whatever was in Lucas’ file, Gemma knew it. She knew why Lucas was promoted, she knew why he didn’t exist on paper before 1995. And she had slipped up by telling Lucas that Ros had visited. _Now, to figure out how to use that_.

Turning her attention to the pages that were under the dictionary, Ros felt growing unease as she rifled through them. That unease turned into full concern as she saw all the notes and files she had photocopied about the Russian mobster that had been working with her father. She had never told anyone that she had been trying to determine the validity of Adam’s claim that her father and that Russian mobster were in league together. Ros certainly had never told anyone that she was compiling her own evidence in a bid to try to get her father to turn on the Yelencovich and, in the process, possibly reduce his own sentence. Yet, here it all was. Every bit of evidence she had found thus far, stacked neatly under the dictionary Lucas had left her.

Ros looked up at the door in concern. Not only had Lucas been in her flat, but he had found her slicks. The threat was even clearer than Gemma’s had been. If Ros kept poking, Lucas would start poking. _Sleeping with him had been a mistake_. He had said that he had gone for a walk, but what if he had used that time to search for her slicks? She would have been asleep and, while she wanted to _think_ she’d wake up if he started rummaging around her house, she also knew that their activities had left her rather exhausted.

She dropped the papers on the coffee table and sat back on the couch. If she had something more concrete to fuel her distrust of Lucas, she would have kept trying to dig up his past. Something had happened in his past, something big enough that he got Harry and Gemma to both hide it. But, without anything concrete to go off of, she was risking her father potentially getting out of prison early for… what? A doubt? A feeling that Lucas was dirty?

Running a hand through her hair, Ros stared at the dictionary in the fireplace. She rather doubted Lucas had been kind enough to leave any fingerprints that could definitively prove it was him that had broken into her house. Even if he did, his fingerprints were easily explained away now that she had invited him to her house and slept with him. _Damn it. Damn it, damn it, damn it!_

Ros closed her eyes and took a deep breath. She was a diplomat’s daughter. Her father had made sure that she had politics for breakfast, acting for lunch, and manipulating for dinner. If Lucas wanted to enter a battle of wits with her, she’d call his bluff. Not now, not when she didn’t have anything concrete to go after him with. But, eventually. He would slip up. _Men always do_. And, when Lucas did slip up? She’d be there, ready to throw him back into prison for working with the FSB.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> My usual, thank you as always for the comments, kudos, and readership! And thank you, as always, to Zen for beta'ing this!


	22. Chapter 22

Lucas rubbed his forehead as he waited impatiently for the coffee to finish brewing. He supposed that was the downside of coming to work early: no one else had started the coffee because no one else was _here_ yet. Harry was on the phone in his office and Malcolm was tinkering with the cooked explosive from the restaurant. Everyone else was probably still either in bed or doing their morning commute. Either way, Lucas was feeling the effects of another sleepless night and the coffee wasn’t brewing fast enough.

Finally, the coffee finished. Lucas poured himself a cup and added two sugar before bringing it back to his desk. He was almost finished the cup and was contemplating if he wanted to risk Harry seeing him going for a refill when Ros came onto the Grid. She didn’t break pace as she reached into her oversized bag and tossed a rather familiar looking dictionary in front of him.

“I think you misplaced this,” Ros said coolly. Lucas had to bite back a smile as he reached towards the dictionary and idly flipped through the pages as if he’d never seen the dictionary before. “I’ve always been more of an Oxford fan, myself.”

Before he could reply, Harry stepped out of his office. “Lucas, Ros, conference room.”

Lucas looked up at Ros, who pointedly ignored him and went straight to the conference room. Judging from her sudden frostiness, Lucas assumed she got the hint. _Good_. It didn’t take him long to figure out why Ros had intelligence on Misha Yelencovich squirrelled away. She was missing pieces, clearly, otherwise she would have brought it forward to either her father or to Harry in a bid to get her father’s sentence reduced, but the papers served Lucas’ purposes. If he were feeling charitable, he might have even considered giving her what _he_ knew about Yelencovich from when he did his homework for Polecat eight years ago.

Instead, Lucas got to his feet and, taking his coffee with him, made his way to the conference room. He sat opposite Ros. Slowly, the rest of the team trickled in, no doubt flagged by Harry as soon as they stepped through the pods. As Lucas waited for everyone to get settled, he finished his coffee and wondered what the urgency was. Usually, Harry at least let everyone walk in through the pods and take their jackets off before corralling everyone into the conference room. _Maybe Harry has something on the Al-Qaeda bombers?_ Lucas hoped so. He really, really, _really_ hoped so.

Finally, everyone was seated at the table. Harry didn’t say anything as he pressed a button on the remote. Lucas tensed as he heard an elongated, loud beep. _What is Sugarhorse? Who is in your network?_ He blinked rapidly, trying to focus on the message on the screen, that whatever was about to play was the property of the US Department of Defense. When the video started to play, Lucas remembered to _breathe_ and exhaled slowly, forcing himself to focus on the footage of an unmanned drone in Afghanistan.

“ _I do not have control of the vehicle_ ,” a voice was saying. Lucas frowned before widening his eyes minutely as the drone began firing on a base. “ _Oh my God_ ,” was the last thing the narrator said before Harry turned off the footage.

“The predator drone was hacked by the Al-Qaeda and was made to fire on its own base. Seven US deaths,” Harry said. “The Americans are upset as it was a British portal that the Al-Qaeda hacked. They want to install a new network, Cybershell, to reduce the number of potential cyber attacks British networks may face and prevent another tragedy like this from happening.”

“Hopefully it works,” Connie said disdainfully.

“I’ve been assured it works,” Harry said. “Whether it does or not… Well, I suppose that remains to be seen.”

“What do you need from us?” Ros asked.

“The CIA is sending a cryptographer to London install Cybershell. We need someone to pick her up and bring her here safely.”

“Lucas can do it,” Ros said coolly.

Lucas blinked again. _Great, babysitting duty._ He supposed he _probably_ deserved it for breaking into Ros’ flat last night. Still, Lucas inclined his head. At the very least, he could use the excuse to hit a coffee shop and grab an actual, decent cup of coffee to go.

“We will also need someone to liaise with the CIA while they set up the Cybershell terminal,” Harry said. “Malcolm, Connie, I’d like you to prepare our servers for the upgrade.”

“I can liaise with the cousins,” Ros said.

“What do you want us to do?” Jo asked, gesturing to her and Ben.

“Finish your paperwork from yesterday,” Ros said. “Unless Harry needs you doing something else?”

“No, that is all. Remember. Seven people are dead because the Al-Qaeda hacked a drone through a British portal. As much as I don’t like the idea of using American networks, this is what is best and will assist us in preserving relations with them. _Try_ to be nice to them, please. Dismissed.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I decided to do a double-upload, since both this chapter (and the one before it) are kind of short, but are sufficiently different that I can't just smush them together into the same chapter, heh.
> 
> Soooo for people who didn't know, I, um, dislike s9. To, uh, put it mildly. :) Anyway, I decided to take a plot that could have been really good had the s9 writers not, you know, did what they did, and rewrite it. Hopefully I do it justice, and hopefully you all enjoy! :)
> 
> Thanks as always to my lovely readers, people who comment, and people who leave kudos! It is much appreciated (even if I am literally _the worst_ at answering in a timely fashion and I would like to apologize once again to the lovely guest that left a comment on the last update). And thank you to Zen for beta'ing this!
> 
> Last thing I want to mention is that I decided to make Little Boy Lost my NaNo project again this year, hopefully to finish it off, since I've been in a bit of a slump and I really, really want to get this story done! So updates _probably_ won't be affected by NaNo, but I don't want to make any promises, just in case!


	23. Chapter 23

Lucas scowled as he pulled down a long stretch of mostly deserted back road in the middle of nowhere. He knew that there’d be hell to pay for breaking into Ros’ house and digging up the intel on the mobster that was in league with her father. He _didn’t_ think that she’d be so petty as to send him to babysit some cryptographer. _Should have seen that one coming, though_. Still, he supposed he’d rather be out in the field than sitting on the Grid, being glared at the entire time, even if it _did_ mean he had to babysit some posh American cryptographer.

His phone chimed just as he spotted what he assumed were the Americans’ cars blockading the road. They had been the ones to select the spot, going for isolated and just outside the city limits. Apparently, the cryptographer was their baby and they were worried having her travel through conventional means like an airport would only get her killed. _No, instead, they thought out in some isolated spot was the ideal place to be. What could possibly go wrong?_ He scowled as came to a stop. Not killing the engine quite yet, Lucas checked his phone and lifted an eyebrow as he read the text. _Lorie Hanson is being sent home tomorrow_ , Kate’s message read. _Well, I suppose that’s_ ** _some_** _good news_.

Turning off the engine, Lucas got out of the car and flashed his credentials as he walked up to the car that he gathered contained his babysittee. One of the Americans held up his hand and Lucas came to a stop. “Hey, mate,” he said, offering a smile that he didn’t quite feel, but hoped would convince the security he wasn’t here to hurt their baby. “Security Services.” The two guards glanced at each other before the American in Lucas’ way stepped aside and gestured for him to go towards the window.

“Hey, James Bond,” a young, female voice said. _Drawled, more like_.

“Not exactly. Robert Wheeler, MI-5. Miss Ortiz,” he said, tilting his head as she got out.

“Danielle,” she corrected. “Only the big wigs call me Miss Ortiz.” She paused as he assessed her. _Definitely not what I expected the cousins to send_. He was starting to think _posh_ was not the correct term to describe the girl. She looked fresh off the corner, complete with the sheer blue shirt with one sleeve ripped off just above her elbow, gaudy jewellery, jean shorts that barely covered her arse, sheer, ripped leggings, and cowboy boots. If it weren’t for the steel briefcase handcuffed to her wrist, he would have guessed that she had a _very_ different profession than a CIA cryptographer.

As if reading his thoughts, she said, “They showed you that old yearbook photo of me, didn’t they? They think people won’t take me seriously if they know the true horror.”

 _I’ve seen true horror and it sure as hell doesn’t wear cowboy boots_. “We need to get moving,” Lucas said, glancing down the road. The sooner he got this over with, the sooner he could join back up with the manhunt for the Al-Qaeda bombers.

“Woah, less with the chitchat, James, we need to get moving,” Danielle said. If he wasn’t so annoyed at having to do a job that he was certain could be foisted off on Ben or Jo, he would have smirked at her attitude. Instead, he walked back to his car and got in, waiting only for her to get in before starting the car.

“Well, this’ll be fun,” she said as he turned the car around and started back the way he had come. Her seatbelt clicked as she buckled in.

He gave her guards a one-fingered salute, in honour of their Americanness, in the rear-view mirror before making his way back to the main road.

 _It’ll be fun for one of us_.

 

-x-

 

Ros rubbed her forehead as the phone started to ring. She _really_ didn’t like the idea of the CIA having access to MI-5’s computers, but she had to concede that they had a point. MI-5’s systems _were_ outdated and they _did_ need an upgrade. She just… wasn’t as confident as Harry that Cybershell was the right system to upgrade to. Not too long ago the cousins had been snatching potential, high-profile assets off the street. Now, they wanted inside the Grid, inside MI-5’s internal network, to update the computers with a program that they controlled.

No, Ros thought, this was a _terrible_ idea. But she didn’t see an alternative. So, with the patience ingrained in her from a young age, Ros picked up the phone and answered, “Yes?”

“Your officer just picked up Kipper,” the latest CIA liaison, Libby McCall, said. Ros rolled her eyes. McCall had _insisted_ on calling Ortiz ‘Kipper.’ He claimed it was because he’d rather not compromise their darling cryptographer or Cybershell by saying her name over ‘potentially compromised channels.’ Ros thought that it was just a glorified way for him to try to show her that he was in charge now that Lori had inexplicably been called back to Langley and was expected to return Stateside tomorrow. If she was honest, Ros would say that she was _hardly_ impressed by McCall’s peacocking.

“Then our business will soon be concluded,” Ros said smoothly, not letting any of the disdain she felt colour her words. _Father would be so proud_ , she thought.

“Just make sure Kipper arrives unharmed and then we’ll go from there.”

“Naturally,” Ros said and ended the call. It was a minor thing, ensuring that she had the last word, but she had a feeling it would irk McCall to know that _she_ had ended the call and not _him_.

Abruptly, a loud clatter sounded behind her. Ros spun in her chair to see Malcolm’s face contorted in _rage_. A clipboard, the source of the noise, laid on the floor. “I can’t take this anymore!” Malcolm snapped.

Ros blinked as Malcolm stormed past her towards the gents. She… couldn’t remember the last time she had seen Malcolm this angry. Adam had mentioned to her once that he hadn’t taken Colin’s death well, but he had never acted as though he held her accountable for that. He’d always been civil, kind, even, to her. Seeing him throw a clipboard to the floor in rage…. Ros frowned. _Something is wrong_.

Harry stepped out of his office, frowning at the commotion, likely. Ros exchanged a worried look with Harry as Jo cautiously picked up the clipboard. Ros spun back around in her chair, wondering what had set Malcolm off. While she wouldn’t be surprised to find out Malcolm was upset over the thought of the cousins fussing over MI-5’s computer systems, she rather doubted that was the cause of Malcolm’s outburst. No one was happy about the cousins coming in and mucking up MI-5’s computer systems. But to have an outburst like this? _Surely_ something had to have caused it. Malcolm simply wasn't prone to random outbursts, not like this.

“What’s wrong with him?” Ben asked as Jo put the clipboard back on Malcolm’s desk. The CIA officers hovering near Connie’s desk shook their heads and went back to whatever it was they were doing, all under Connie’s watchful eye.

Jo shrugged at Ben. “Maybe he’s upset about the systems upgrade?”

“This seems a bit much for being upset over a system upgrade,” Ben said.

“Maybe, but these computers are Malcolm’s babies,” Jo pointed out.

“Should one of us go after him, you think?” Ben asked.

Ros sighed. “I’ll go,” she said and got to her feet. “Excuse me,” she said to the officer currently rooting through her desk. _Maybe, when I get back, I’ll ask him to deliberately mess up Lucas’ desk_. It’d serve him right, too. It took her bloody well close to two hours righting her desk when he had _reorganized_  her desk. Even if the wanker denied it, she knew it had to have been him who had moved everything around on her desk. Ben and Jo didn’t have the balls to do it and Connie and Malcolm wouldn’t have thought to do it. Not to mention, there was the thinly veiled threat last night. _Definitely asking them to make liberal use of his desk and to feel free to leave it a mess_.

Still fuming, Ros made her way towards the gents’. Her footsteps echoed loudly in the deserted hall. With all hands on deck while the cousins upgraded their systems, no one was wandering about or running from the Grid to IT and back again. Finally, she reached the gents and knocked on the door. When there was no answer, she called Malcolm’s name before walking inside. “Is something wrong?” she asked.

“Shh,” Malcolm said and ran his hand along each of the automatic sinks, activating them. Ros frowned. He didn’t stop there, though, and grabbed the cleaning checklist to drop that in the hand drier, setting that off too. She half expected him to run from stall to stall to get the toilets going, too, really add to the din.

“We have a serious problem,” he said in a hushed tone that she could barely hear over all the noise.

“Evidently. What’s going on?”

“Someone’s been listening to us.”

Ros blinked and shook her head. “What?”

Malcolm looked agitated and took a moment to collect his thoughts. “I only saw it because I was cleaning up the systems for Cybershell, but someone’s inside our systems and they’ve been listening to everything we’ve said.”

“How is that possible?” Ros asked. This could not have come at a worse time. They had the bombers to track down and the cryptographer en route. They did _not_ have time for some has-been hacker to somehow get into MI-5’s systems. “And can you get them out of our systems?”

“I don’t know, but they have access to everything. Our files, our data, our personnel files. Even our phones. They’re listening to everything we’re saying, can see everything we’re doing. This is highly sophisticated work and, if I try anything, they’ll know right away and shut me down.”

Ros felt an overwhelming urge to scream, but managed to suppress it. Instead, she rubbed her forehead. “Damn.”

“Indeed.”

“Do you know where it’s coming from at least?” she asked.

“Not yet.”

Ros pinched the bridge of her nose. “Find out, Malcolm. I’ll update Harry.”

 _So much for a quiet systems upgrade_. She only hoped that the hiccough only affected the Grid and not Lucas, otherwise she'd be getting an angry phone call from Libby instead of just an  _annoying_ phone call.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The usual! Thank you to my lovely readers, thank you to everyone who has left kudos and comments, thank you to Zen for beta reading this!


	24. Chapter 24

Contrary to Lucas’ expectations, the girl actually knew how to shut up, thankfully. He wasn’t sure he quite wanted to listen to her prattle for the entire three-hour trip back to Thames House. After all, there were only so many James Bond jokes he could hear before he started to tune her out. At one point, she had touched _everything_ she could reach in the car, insisting that there were secret compartments and that she was going to find them. It didn’t matter that he had told her _five times_ that this was a normal, standard car, that the Service didn’t _have_ the types of cars she seemed to think they did. She was determined. She would find them.

Lucas was very proud of the fact that he managed not to say anything when,  _shockingly_ , she didn’t find any secret compartments.

As she sulked over the lack of secret “spy gadgets” in the car, Lucas focused on keeping an eye out for potential tails. They were following a cleaning route and a fairly simple one at that, but he figured it didn’t hurt to be too cautious. If the cryptographer was as important as the cousins made her out to be, he didn’t want to be the one that got her hurt. When she started badly singing along to the radio, Lucas gripped the steering wheel tightly. _I swear to God, I’m going to kill her_. He reconsidered. If he killed her, he'd undoubtedly have to go back to prison, and Lucas really wasn't eager to see the inside of another cell any time soon.  _Fine. I'll gag her and toss her in the boot, then_.

Content with the compromise he'd made with himself, Lucas looked up at the mirror again. Tailing him was the cousins’ plain, black car. After he had gotten back into London, he had noticed that a black car had pulled onto the motorway behind him. When it flashed its high-beams at him, he assumed that it belonged to the cousins, and, when he had pulled off the motorway to grab another coffee for himself and a bagel for Ortiz, he had come back to find two CIA officers standing outside his car, talking to Ortiz. It didn’t bother him, overly, that they were following him back to Thames House. It didn't even bother him that they were the ones that had insisted on circling around the city so much, just to be  _sure_ that they weren't being followed. What _did_ bother him was the blue van tailing _their_ car. Normally, Lucas wouldn’t think anything of a van on the motorway, but there had been several main exits off the road. The whole point of the cleaning route was that it was populous enough that it was unlikely anyone would try anything, but it wasn’t on the main thoroughfare into the city so they could spot if anyone was following them. _Shit_.

“What’s up, James?” Ortiz asked, pausing in her rather lacklustre rendition of whatever country station she had found on the radio.

“We’re on a cleaning route. That’s all you need to know,” Lucas said as he checked his mirror again. _What the hell?_ It looked almost like the van was tailing the cousins’ car, he thought. If it had spotted the cousins’ car…. _Is my vehicle compromised too?_

“I already know about the route,” Ortiz said. He caught a flash of chipped blue nail polish as she waved her hand dismissively. “What I mean is that you’re looking in that mirror every ten seconds, you’re breathing funny, and your hands are _real_ tight on the wheel.”

Lucas scowled and forced himself to relax. It wouldn’t do for her to catch on that something might be wrong. _Maybe I’m just being paranoid_. He was aware enough to recognize that he was… more prone to bouts of paranoia than he had been eight years ago. Still, this was just too coincidental. And with Ortiz being so important to the success of Cybershell.… Lucas wasn’t sure he wanted to risk that his paranoia was wrong with so much at stake.

“Just staying alert,” Lucas said, trying to keep his tone calm and even. “Checking for tails. Keeping you safe. From what I hear, you’re very special.”

“It’s what my dad used to tell me,” Ortiz said. She glanced at his wrists, which he only noticed because he was looking away from the rear view mirror again. “Nice tats, by the way.”

Lucas shrugged uncomfortably. “Yeah.”

“Where’d you get them done?”

“Nowhere you’ve heard of.”

She lifted her sleeve. “I have some too, you know. Got this one when I did some time in Rockfell Correction Facility in Indiana, 2004.”

“Wow, you did time and they’re trusting you with this?” He couldn’t help the sarcasm that slipped out.

“You did time and they’re trusting you with this?” Ortiz countered. Lucas lifted an eyebrow and she shrugged. “I know prison tats when I see them. What’d you do?”

“Stole some stuff,” Lucas said neutrally.

“Oh. Mine was for hacking the Pentagon.”

Lucas looked over at her. _Definitely did not see that one coming_. He wasn’t sure if he should be impressed or terrified that this woman, who looked barely older than he had been when he joined up with MI-5, had hacked the Pentagon. _No wonder the cousins want her kept safe_.

“So, what’d you steal?” she asked.

Lucas smiled thinly. “Nothing of note." It wasn't a _complete_ lie. He'd been captured before he was able to find any useful intelligence, but he didn't particularly feel like sharing  _why_ he had prison tattoos, much less with a kid that annoyed him as much as Ortiz did. He had a feeling that she would make a joke about it or, worse,  _pity_ him, and the  _last_ damn thing he wanted was  _pity_. He dealt with enough of that from Harry, when Harry thought Lucas wasn't looking or was preoccupied.

“But something noteworthy enough to land you time,” she pressed.

“Yep.”

“That’s it?”

Lucas glanced over at her and smirked. “That’s it.”

Ortiz sighed and threw her hands up in the air. “I’m trying to have a conversation here. The least you could do is participate, you know?”

He didn’t answer, just kept smirking as he checked the rear-view mirror again. The blue van was still there, hovering just behind the cousins’ cars. Lucas rubbed his hand over his mouth. He could keep on the cleaning route and hope that he was wrong, but he couldn’t shake the feeling that his instincts _were_ right, that the van _was_ following them. He glanced over at Ortiz, who was still chattering away, and tuned her out. If he wanted to keep her safe, he’d have to lose her people, which would get a bunch of people upset with him. _But at least I’ll lose the tail, too_. At the very least, it’d probably cause some extra headaches for Ros if he pissed the Americans off.

Lucas waited until it was almost too late to take the exit, and then rather sharply turned into the exit lane and followed the ramp off the motorway and accelerated. The move earned him a few irate honks from other drivers, but had the desired effect of buying him at least a few seconds as both the cousins and the van following them realized that he was deviating from the route.

Ortiz yelped and grabbed the handle while staring at him. “What are you doing?” she asked, her eyes widening.

“Losing a tail,” Lucas said as he turned sharply into a parking garage. He didn’t want to take the chance that whoever was following the cousins had tagged his car as well.

He had barely turned the car off before he was already moving. “Come on, we need to move!” he yelled as he practically dragged Ortiz out of the car. “Come on!”

To her credit, she ran with him without any further questions. Lucas released her arm so that he could dig in his pockets for the multi-tool. While Lucas was no stranger to boosting cars, MI-5’s toys made stealing _infinitely_ easier and he didn’t have the time to waste picking the lock and boosting the car. Finding the tool he was looking for, he pushed it into the lock of a civilian car and drilled through the lock. He glanced over his shoulder, but didn’t see Ortiz’s people or the tail. _Not for much longer, though_ , he suspected. Wrenching open the door, he quickly unlocked the doors and Ortiz got in beside him. She clutched the briefcase tightly to her as Lucas pushed the drill into the ignition, carefully drilling through the pins. It’d been awhile since he had done this, but he figured he didn’t exactly have a whole lot of options if he wanted to keep Ortiz safe. As soon as he was done drilling, Lucas flipped the multi-tool so that the screwdriver was out and he pressed it into the ignition. _Moment of truth_. To his relief, the car started.

“So I’m going to go on a limb and say you stole a car that got you prison time?” Ortiz asked as he pulled out of the parking garage.

“It was a nice car,” Lucas said. _Actually, it was rather shitty, and it wasn’t a car at all_.

“No shit,” she said. Lucas merged back onto the motorway. “What happened?”

Lucas adjusted the rear-view mirror and was relieved to see he had lost both the tail and the cousins. “We had a tail, picked it up about twenty kilometres back. Not sure if they had all our vehicles tagged or just the CIA’s car, so I ditched our vehicle to get a new one.”

“You don’t think.… Eddie’s okay, you think?”

“I’m sure they’re fine,” Lucas said. He surprised himself with how gentle he sounded. “Pissed that they lost us, but fine.”

Ortiz nodded, but didn’t look convinced. Lucas sighed. There wasn’t much he could say to her. And, really, what _could_ he say? He was a stranger to her and he had just gone out of his way to lose the only people who were familiar to her. _I don’t have time to dwell on this_. He had shit to do and a girl to keep away from whoever was tailing them. Not to mention, the fact that there was even a tail in the first place worried him. It meant someone  _knew_ that Ortiz was in the country, they  _knew_  exactly where she would be, and they  _knew_ who she was.  _But how could they know that the CIA were going to fly Ortiz out to London to update MI-5's systems with Cybershell?_  Lucas hadn't even been told who he was supposed to be escorting until about five minutes before he had to leave to pick her up. _Unless whoever was following them wasn't after Cybershell?_  No, it had to be Cybershell. It  _had_ to be. It didn't make sense to Lucas that it would be anything else.

Taking a hand off the wheel to dig in his pocket, Lucas grabbed his Bluetooth and slipped it on. He glanced down for a second to unlock his phone and, after briefly looking up to merge back into traffic, another glance down to find Harry’s number. On the third ring, Harry picked up. “Alpha One?” Harry asked.

“Yeah, you’re about to get an angry call from the cousins,” Lucas said, glancing again in the rear-view mirror. “I had to dump the package’s security detail and switch to a civilian car. You won’t be able to track me.”

“What? Why?”

“They were compromised. Look, I’m taking a new route home. Everything’s fine, I just need to be sure. I’ll see you later.”

Lucas disconnected the call and returned his focus to the road. Ortiz looked uncomfortable and he almost felt sorry for the girl. He had, after all, practically kidnapped her as far as she was concerned. “Look, I’m sure your people are safe,” he said. Ortiz nodded and pulled out her phone. “What are you doing?” Lucas asked.

“Updating my people. They’ll want to know.” Lucas snatched the phone from her hands. “Hey, what are you doing?” she demanded and moved to grab the phone. Lucas was faster, though, and tossed it into traffic where he saw another vehicle run it over.

“Being safe. We don’t know how the tail found us. Until I know, I’m not taking any risks.”

“What, you think my people are responsible?” Lucas didn’t answer, just kept staring straight ahead. “So you can use your phone, but I can’t use mine?”

“The tail wasn’t following my vehicle,” Lucas pointed out.

Ortiz’s mouth opened and then snapped close. Finally, Ortiz declared, “I don’t like this,” and crossed her arms across her chest. The handcuff around her wrist clacked loudly against the steel briefcase attached at the motion.

 _That makes two of us_. Fortunately, Lucas did not say as much. _Ros would be so proud of me_. Instead, Lucas stared steadfastly at the road. Great. Now, not only did Lucas have to play babysitter, but he had to make sure that whoever was tailing them didn’t find them again. _Oh, joy._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As always: eternal love to Zen for beta reading this, eternal love to you, my lovely readers, eternal love to those of you who have left comments and kudos, and apologies for taking eternity to update again. <3


	25. Chapter 25

Ros looked impassively at her computer. It was frustrating, knowing there wasn’t much she could do. It would look too suspicious if she followed Jo, Ben, and Malcolm into the hall. The brief power outage Malcolm had staged had given them a chance to bring everyone up to speed, but it still wasn’t an ideal situation. They could only have so many power outages before their voyeurs grew suspicious, which meant that it was essential that whoever was watching thought things were as normal on the Grid. Malcolm wasn’t sure how long the hackers had been watching and they couldn’t take any chances, not with the cryptographer on her way and Cybershell at stake.

It had been fifteen minutes since the power had come back on. Malcolm had managed to leave rather convincingly by saying he had to check on the systems after the power outage. Jo and Ben had followed. Ros supposed that it was rather fortuitous that the two of them sneaking off together wasn’t _entirely_ uncommon. They had always thought they had successfully gone unnoticed for half an hour, usually. Had they not worked for an organization that trained its operatives to notice things, they might have even gotten away with it. Still, it did make for a convenient excuse for them to leave the Grid without drawing the attention of the unwanted voyeurs, so Ros supposed she couldn’t be _too_ irritated with them. For now.

Of course, the three of them meeting in the hall, where there were no cameras, meant that it would look suspicious if Ros, Harry, and Connie went as well. Instead, Ros had to sit and _wait_. _Pity. Waiting was never one of my best qualities._ Connie was in Harry’s office, speaking with him likely about old times or whatever she and Harry talked about behind closed doors, which meant Ros was alone on the Grid to supervise the cousins. _Wonderful_. _Just. Wonderful_. At least they were almost finished. Soon, she would be able to dismiss them and the team could focus on the problem at hand _without_ twisting McCall’s knickers.

The minutes ticked by and Ros could feel her frustration mounting. There wasn’t a whole lot she could do to help with the situation, not without tipping off the hackers. Malcolm still had nothing in place to let them speak plainly without their uninvited guests being privy to their conversations. Lucas was still out and about and bringing the package to the Grid. And then, of course, there was the question of the tail he had mentioned to Harry. The hackers _had_ to be linked to the tail. It was just too coincidental for it to be an accident that someone had hacked into MI-5’s systems just before the Cybershell update and there was a tail following the Cybershell cryptographer. Lucas was due in two hours, which meant that they had two hours to sort out this mess, get the hackers out of MI-5, and figure out who was tailing Lucas.

 _No pressure_. She was starting to think maybe sending Lucas was a mistake. She should have gone herself instead of acting out of petty revenge. He was good at the job, he had to be if he broke into her house last night as cleanly as he had without her alarms being triggered. But, the fact remained, Ros wasn’t sure just _how_ good Lucas was, yet she had to trust that he would be able to keep the package alive, and she _hated_ that feeling. For all she knew, he was one of those officers that adhered strictly to the rulebook. _Okay, maybe not_. A rulebook-thumping officer wouldn’t have thought to stage a fake bombing or to shake the tail without Grid approval first. Still, she didn’t share Harry’s confidence that Lucas could handle this, not with the residual damage from prison. She had heard him that night he had stayed at her home. He wasn't  _nearly_ as fine as he pretended. The last time an officer wasn't as  _fine_ as they wanted to be.... 

Ros snapped her head up as she heard Jo, Ben, and Malcolm trickled back from the hall. The trio crowded around Malcolm's desk, still talking animatedly about something. Ros could only hope that they had found a way around the Grid’s uninvited houseguests. She waited, tapping a pen against her palm, for them to either call her over or for a reason to go to Malcolm's desk arose. If she just went over as soon as they got back, the hackers would grow suspicious. Or, well,  _she_ would be suspicious. As each second dragged on, Ros found herself grinding her teeth. If Malcolm had thought of a way to communicate, he didn’t say anything to her, and that made her even more impatient. _Damn it, we need to find a way to communicate_. They were bloody spies. Their livelihoods depended on communicating in situations where communicating was difficult. _How_ could no one think of a single bloody way to communicate without their voyeurs knowing?

“Harry, we’ve got something,” Malcolm said finally. Ros glanced over at Harry’s office and practically jumped to her feet. In a handful of strides, Ros joined the small crowd around Malcolm’s desk. Harry and Connie made their way over and looked over Malcolm’s shoulder at the screen. “A chatter report in our system with coded references to Cybershell.”

“It could be someone after the access codes,” Connie said, crossing her arms across her chest.

“Do we know where the chatter originates from?” Ros asked, frowning. She thought Cybershell was supposed to be a _secret_ database. Unless… Unless this was what they had been discussing in the hallway. They had a plan, then. Maybe, if Ros was lucky, it’d even work.

“Mobile account in south London, Drakefield Street.”

“Ben, Jo, go, see what you can find,” Harry said, nodding. “Bring back some good news.”

-x-

Ortiz had remained remarkably quiet after Lucas had tossed her phone out the window. So far, he hadn’t noticed any other tails, which he supposed was a good thing. He imagined it helped that he was taking the rather scenic route to Thames House instead of the more direct way, electing to stick to backroads where it would be more obvious if someone started tailing him. Every now and then, he would hear the clack of Ortiz’s handcuff moving against the briefcase as she fidgeted. _At least she’s not singing again_. He might actually hand her over to whoever had tailed the cousins’ car if she started singing again.

As he drove, Lucas tried to figure out how the tailers had known the cleaning route. Even he hadn’t known what the route was until Ros had called him while he was on the road to collect Ortiz from the CIA. _The person that burned me, maybe?_ But that didn’t make sense. Section D had gone through many changes since he’d been Section Chief. Harry and Malcolm were the only two left from the team Lucas had when he was arrested. _And Harry wouldn’t have put Ortiz’s life at risk, surely._ It bothered him that he wasn’t… completely certain of that. It wouldn’t be the first time that Harry had put the wellbeing of the country over the wellbeing of the individual. Lucas had opposed it back then, and he opposed it now, if Harry _was_ the party responsible for leaking the cleaning route.

Still, Lucas didn’t like Harry for it. If Harry _was_ responsible, he would have been more cautious about who he sent to tail Lucas. While Lucas was deliberately downplaying how much he knew about the job, he couldn’t bluff Harry. Harry already _knew_ what Lucas was capable of. He wouldn’t have sent a tail that would have made the mistake of being caught. Which brought Lucas back to trying to figure out how whoever had tailed the cousins knew the route.

 _Unless they didn’t know the route. If they knew the meeting place_ …. The cousins had chosen their meeting place a fair ways outside the city to make it easier to smuggle Ortiz back into the city. If she was as important as the CIA made her out to be, the last thing they would want is for her to be in the open where she’d be a target. Outside London at least reduced the chances of any surprise shooters. If the _meeting place_ was compromised, then there were only a few different places where Ortiz would conceivably be brought back into the city. All the tailers had to do was place a vehicle at each of those entrances and wait for the cousins’ car to reappear.

 _But that still doesn’t explain who sent them_. Lucas cut his eyes towards the briefcase before looking back at the road. Likely, the people responsible wanted Cybershell. It was just a question of _who_ wanted it and how badly. _This could get messy_.

“Ever kill anyone, James?” Ortiz asked, bringing Lucas out of his reverie. Lucas sighed internally. He did not get paid enough to deal with this. _And here I thought I left all my interrogators in Russia_. He gave her a look that said he wasn’t amused before returning to focusing on the road. “And his answer is an enigmatic look,” Ortiz declared dramatically. Her hand waved equally dramatically to emphasize her point. Lucas didn’t even deign that with a look, much less a reply. She was relentless, though, and continued, oblivious – or perhaps simply uncaring – to his growing annoyance, “So, got any hobbies?”

“Nope,” Lucas said flatly. Nothing he’d share with her, anyway.

To Ortiz’s credit, she continued, undeterred. _What does it take to shut this girl up?_ “I climb mountains. Although, these days, I have to go with a big spunky dude like you to keep me safe.” She looked up at him and blinked flirtatiously at him. “You’d keep me safe, right?”

“That _is_ what I’m doing now, is it not?” he asked.

Ortiz flopped back in her seat. “So you really don’t have any hobbies? Books? Movies? Music? Come on, _everyone_ likes music.” She leaned forward to fiddle with the radio and, soon enough, country music was blaring out of the speakers again.

“Used to,” he said. The girl was tenacious. Silence didn’t deter her. Maybe giving her an _almost_ answer would. _My shrink would be so damn proud_.

“ _Used_ to? You _used_ to like music? How does a person go off music? Seriously?” _Or not_. He glanced up at the roof of the car for a second, silently praying for patience.

Lucas didn’t answer right away. He had tried getting back into music when he got out of prison. Mostly, he found it was just noise to chase away the silence. Sometimes, he found it genuinely interesting to listen to. More times than not, he found it… sad. It reminded him too much of what he lost. _Vyeta_. He blinked once, twice, as he gripped the steering wheel tightly.

“Sometimes you just stop hearing it,” Lucas said quietly.

If Ortiz had something witty to say, she kept it to herself. Instead, she looked up at him before nodding once in understanding.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Quick update: I don't remember if I announced it or not, but I actually did finish LBL during NaNo (huzzah!), so it is completed! That being said, I'm staggering the updates to once every two-ish weeks (here's hoping my gnat memory remembers when to update, blargh!) to give myself a chance to get a head start on the s8 rewrite.
> 
> As usual, eternal love and thank yous to Zen for beta'ing this and to my lovely readers!


	26. Chapter 26

Ros breathed a sigh of relief as the cousins filed out of the pods. _Good riddance_. The last thing she needed was the CIA catching wind that something was amiss and having to placate McCall _again_. After Lucas’ little stunt losing the cousins’ car, she had to listen to McCall irately inform her that he was not impressed with her officer’s brazen manoeuvre. _I never thought I would see the day that_ ** _I_** _defended Lucas’ actions_ , Ros thought as she scowled at the phone, almost _daring_ it to ring again. If Lucas thought there was a tail following him, then, as far as Ros was concerned, no matter how reluctant she was to think so, Lucas made the right decision in losing the cousins and switching cars. His goal was to deliver the cryptographer to them safe and unharmed and tails _rarely_ followed for _good_ reasons.

Shortly after the CIA officers had left, Jo came back to the Grid. Ros frowned. _Where’s Ben?_ Jo caught Ros’ frown and gave her an apologetic look. “Ben’s mum called, asked him to pick up something for her. He said he’s sorry, should be back in twenty minutes or so.”

Ros lifted an eyebrow. While Ben had _hardly_ warmed up to Ros after their… initial introduction and didn’t usually share information about his private life with her, this was also the first time she knew of that his ‘mother had called.’ Not saying anything, Ros simply inclined her head and turned back to the paperwork on her desk. _If Ben’s not here, then they must have found something_. Hopefully, with luck, it’d give them the edge they needed to get rid of their unwanted houseguests.

Thirty minutes later, Ben finally came through the pods. Ros glanced up and watched him walk towards Jo, handing her a bag. “From Mum,” Ben said with a smile. “She knows how much you love her chocolate cupcakes.”

Jo grinned. “Your mum is the sweetest. Thank her for me, will you?”

“‘Course,” Ben said and sat down. “I made sure to snag one with extra icing for you.”

Jo dived into the bag, pulling out a tin that she promptly opened. Ros rolled her eyes and met Harry’s eyes through the window to his office. She rather doubted that Ben had _just_ brought Jo cupcakes. Or, at least, she _hoped_ Ben brought more than cupcakes. They needed _something_ if they wanted to shut down the hackers and get Cybershell installed without the Americans any wiser that their coveted program was almost compromised.

 _If he went out of his way to_ ** _just_** _buy Jo cupcakes, I swear, I’m going to sack him, and then Lucas, because Lucas probably put Ben up to it to spite me_.

With nothing to do but wait until Jo either signalled they found something or Malcolm confirming he found a way for them to communicate without the voyeurs hearing, Ros pursed her lips and looked back at the paperwork on her desk. She _really_ hated paperwork. But she wanted to make sure that Cybershell was installed without a hitch, which meant combing through reports about the various updates that would be required in order to install Cybershell. While Malcolm would have been _better_ to go over the reports, he was… otherwise occupied, and Connie was assisting him as best she could. Which left Ros to go through the reports.

She made it through three reports before Jo slipped towards the ladies’ washroom. Ros glanced at Harry again, minutely nodding her head towards the hall. Harry blinked, which Ros took as him acknowledging her direction. Getting to her feet, Ros said, “I need to walk around before I fall asleep reading these reports. Ben, if Lucas calls, direct him to call my mobile, would you?”

“Sure,” Ben said.

Nodding once at Ben, Ros went into the hall. Malcolm had discovered the blindspot in the hall years ago, back when Adam had… still been alive. As far as Ros knew, he had told Harry about the blindspot, but nothing ever came of it. She never thought she’d be thankful for the government being as cheap as possible and unwilling to redo the camera-work and wiring in the hall to fix the solitary blindspot. They would still have to keep their voices down, but at least it was a start to giving them some way of communicating with each other without their voyeurs any wiser.

Within a few minutes, Harry and Jo joined Ros at the blindspot. Jo’s face was grim as she said, “We’ve got a problem.” She handed Ros a contraband phone, that Ros elected not to comment on. She had _bigger_ concerns than Jo smuggling a phone onto the Grid.  _Was that what Ben got her?_

Ros looked at the screen and frowned. Two of the men, she wasn’t surprised to see didn’t bring up any hits on the facial recognition software. If she were hacking into an intelligence organization, she wouldn’t go herself to investigate a lead. She’d hire some muscle and send them instead. But, that could just be the fact that, as a politician’s daughter, it was rare that she, herself, got her hands dirty. But, the _other_ two faces…. She didn’t recognize either of them, but the facial recognition software had. The man was associated with the FSB and, according to his file, he specialized in cyber intelligence. The fourth face, a woman, was with the Chinese Secret Service. _Shit_. When she read the CSS operative’s description, her eyes widened. _The CSS brought their own cryptographer into this?_

“They must want Cybershell,” Ros surmised. She glanced up at Harry. This was more than bad. This was… _This is a bloody mess_.

“We _can’t_ let them have it,” Harry said as he took the phone from Ros. “If they get into Cybershell, the West will have lost the cyber war before it’s even begun. We _have_ to shut the hackers down, no matter what the cost to us.”

Ros blinked. It was the only indication she gave that what he had said shocked her. After Harry gave the go-ahead to detonate a bomb in Tehran to try to mask British involvement in a potential murder, she knew that it shouldn’t surprise her and yet…. “Harry, the cost to us is all our files. All our assets. All our personnel files.”

“I’m well aware, but our options are limited. We shut down the hackers, which means we sacrifice our intel, or we expose Cybershell, which means we lose our data _and_ the Americans’. No, we have to find these people and stop them before Lucas gets back here with Ortiz.”

She tightened her grip on a pen that she had brought with her. Ros didn’t like it, but Harry was right. No matter what, MI-5’s files would be compromised. At least this way, they could minimize the damage. If the FSB and the Chinese got their hands on Cybershell….

“Alright,” she said. “Jo, give this back to Malcolm, and tell him we need to find the hackers and we need to find them _now_.”

Jo nodded and took the file from her. Ros waited a moment before nodding to Harry. The two of them walked onto the Grid together, calmly discussing various options about what to do about the tail that Lucas had mentioned. Ros had always been talented at acting. Her father had groomed her to take his place one day and her mother had made sure that Ros had all the tools she would need to do just that. Even if she was furious that the hackers were watching every move they made, even if she _seethed_ at the idea that they would get their hands on all of MI-5’s intel, Ros could focus and pretend to be solely concerned with something that, ordinarily, would be a _far_ bigger worry than it currently was. _I have_ ** _other_** _concerns. Lucas’ mysterious tail will just have to wait_.

Papers hitting the floor jolted Ros from her thoughts. Both she and Harry looked over to saw Jo squatting to help Malcolm pick up the files. _Shit. The phone!_ Jo was already covering it with her hand. It took every scrap of restraint Ros had not to glance at one of the computers. The hackers wouldn’t show any signs if they saw the phone, not if they were any good. More likely, she thought, they would shut down the Grid if they saw the phone. It was a phone that they didn’t have control of, that they couldn’t use to spy on the team, and they wouldn’t allow Section D to exploit that. When nothing happened, she exhaled slowly. The hackers hadn’t noticed the phone, then. _We’re still in the clear_.

As Jo was straightening, warning sirens rang throughout the Grid. _Shit_. Security lock messages flashed across all the screens. Red lights flashed. Ben ran towards the pods and tried to get through, but they wouldn’t open. “Damn it,” Ros uttered as she walked over to Malcolm’s desk. The hackers had seen the phone then. They knew that Section D knew they were being watched. _Shit. So much for our plan_.

“Well, now that we’re all acquainted,” Harry said before jerking the wire out of the computer. _Yes, that sure showed them_ , Ros thought crossly. “No need for further pretence, now they know we’re aware. Ben, Malcolm, kill everything they can use to see or hear us. I want some privacy.”

Connie covered her mouth with her hand as Malcolm and Ben exchanged looks before beginning to unplug everything. “This must be their backup plan,” she said. “They’re going to kill Ortiz and use their own cryptographer to input the codes while we’re locked down and powerless. We _need_ to contact Lucas.”

“There _must_ be a way to get a message out of here,” Harry mused.

“They have complete control of our systems,” Connie said. “There’s not a whole lot we _can_ do.”

“So Lucas is on his own and walking into a trap?” Ros asked. She was definitely having second, and third, thoughts about sending Lucas now. _If we make it out of this, I swear, I’m not going to let him irritate me into acting out of petty annoyance_.

“It looks that way,” Connie said rather grimly. “Hopefully he’ll be as crafty as he was with the bombing.”

“Let’s hope so,” Ros said dubiously.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As always, thank you to Zen for beta'ing!


	27. Chapter 27

Ros tapped a pen against the palm of her hand. It was the only indication of her frustration she allowed herself to show. Fifteen minutes had ticked by and they were no closer to a solution. Lucas was still on his way back with the cryptographer. Even if he stopped regularly to change vehicles, they needed to hurry up and find a way to regain control of the Grid and get on top of things. Otherwise, the CSS and the FSB would get their hands on the cryptographer _and_ Cybershell. _Harry’s right. We can’t let them get Cybershell_. She might have her misgivings about the network and she was dubious about whether it was as powerful as the cousins seemed to think it was, but Harry was right. If the FSB and the CSS found a way into Cybershell, the West would lose the cyber war.

 _Of course, this has nothing to do with the fact that you’ve failed again_ , her father’s voice sounded in her head. Ros clenched her hand around the pen. She had fought hard for her father’s approval when she had been a young woman. Everything she had done had been to earn his approval. She had gotten a political science degree, just like her father wanted. She had taken steps to start the application process to one day take over for her father, had gone with him to diplomatic dinners and started making connections. Accepting Colville’s offer and joining MI-6 had been the first time she had openly defied her father. They had fought, that night, and she could still remember him telling her that she had disappointed him, that she had _failed_ him.

Ros had confidently told Dolby that he couldn’t find anyone better to do the job when she had told him to sack her if he thought she wasn’t good enough. And, now, her father’s words - that she had failed, _again_ \- rang through her mind. _If the FSB and the CSS get into Cybershell, I’ll lose everything_. She pursed her lips. _Stay calm. Keep your wits_. She wasn’t going to let the ghosts of her past or her fear of failing distract her. She _couldn’t_.

“So far, we haven’t been able to monitor the hackers, but I think I’ve found a way that we can see what they see,” Malcolm said, pulling Ros out of her reverie. “If I reroute the Internet through the server, we should at least be able to see what they’re doing.”

Ros leaned against the desk, watching the screen as loading files came up. “What are they doing?” she asked, frowning.

“Downloading our archives,” Malcolm said grimly. “Specifically personnel files, starting with us.”

“Of course,” Ros said. _Damn it!_ All the phones on the Grid were down so there was no way to contact Lucas to tell him to delay bringing the cryptographer to the Grid. There had to be _something_ that they could do to get out of the Grid and stop the hackers. _We’re bloody MI-5. How could this happen? How do we not have_ ** _anything_** _in place?_

“How long before they have everything?” Harry asked from where he stood beside her.

“They’re huge data packets, but probably an hour, tops,” Malcolm said, turning back to the computer.

“If you have any technological solutions, I’d love to hear them,” Ros growled.

“Wait, this is strange,” Malcolm said as the sound of numbers being dialled rang through the Grid. “A call’s being made.”

“By whom?” Harry asked.

Malcolm hesitated. “According to this, by you. It’s calling Lucas.”

“Can we talk to him?” Ros asked, suddenly hopeful. Lucas was off the Grid. He might be able to act where they couldn’t. At the very least, they could warn him that someone was listening in to all their conversations and that he needed to keep the cryptographer away from Thames House until they found a way to rid themselves of their unwelcome house guests.

“No, we can only listen,” Malcolm said. _Damn_.

Ros folded her arms across her chest, pressing her knuckles against her mouth. _Shit_. There was nothing more frustrating than watching the ringtone screen and knowing that she was helpless to warn Lucas that the FSB and the CSS were in control of the Grid. She had been helpless before and it hadn’t ended well. She could only hope it would be different this time.

“Yeah?” Lucas asked when he picked up. _Don’t overdo it on the charm, there, North_ , Ros found herself thinking in spite of herself. If she were a betting woman, she’d even wager that his voice sounded a bit tense, like he was irritated. _Excellent_. _At least something good has come from all this._

“Alpha One,” Harry’s voice said. Ros glanced over at Harry, who was frowning. “You can’t return to the Grid. Cybershell has been compromised and cancelled. We’re dispatching a team to recover the codes. Sending you rendezvous coordinates now.”

“Why? What’s happened?” Lucas demanded.

“Can’t say anymore now. Out.” The hackers ended the call with a resounding click.

For a moment, no one said anything. What was there _to_ say? They were all helpless on the Grid and couldn’t do anything but listen to the FSB and the CSS send Lucas into a trap. If it had been Ben or Jo, at least Ros could have predicted how they would proceed. But Lucas? Lucas was the wild card. Certainly, she knew that Harry was convinced Lucas was a brilliant field officer, and she had seen a few glimpses of that brilliance, but she wasn’t as confident in Lucas’ abilities as Harry was, and she couldn’t decide just how worried she should be. If Lucas brought the cryptographer to the coordinates, they would both be killed. It was a sobering thought, and she found herself surprised that she rather hoped Lucas _didn’t_ get himself killed by going to those coordinates. _If he’s going to die,_ ** _I_** _want to be the one to bloody well kill him for being so damn annoying_.

“So, now that we know the FSB and the Chinese have access to voice synthesizers, think we can make our day any worse?” Connie asked, breaking the silence.

Ros started pacing. She hated this. “How are we doing finding a way out?” she demanded. At this rate, she was going to tear apart the Grid in a bid to find an exit.

Ben and Jo glanced at each other and Ros fought the urge to scream. She didn’t _care_ if it was a good plan they were thinking of. Anything was better than the whole lot of _nothing_ that she was coming up with. They had no way of alerting Lucas that the rendezvous was a trap. And, because the order came from Harry and because that bloody idiot was too desperate to prove himself to Harry, he’d walk right into the trap and bring the cryptographer with him, even without knowing why “Harry” had cancelled Cybershell. It was one thing if his stupidity got him killed. But if he got that cryptographer killed, as well? Ros wasn’t so sure that the British would survive the diplomatic fallout with the Americans.

If it weren’t for the fact it annoyed her so much, Ros would have actually been impressed. The FSB and the Chinese couldn’t have asked for a better set up. The only officer in the field right now was the one officer who would do anything Harry said. And that same officer was the only person keeping the cryptographer alive. All they had to do was have the voice of Harry Pearce give him a bloody order, and Lucas would jump simply because it was _Harry_ telling him to. _Damn, damn, damn,_ ** _damn_** _!_

“We might have an idea,” Jo said. “But I don’t think you’ll like it.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, because I'm literally the worst and I feel bad about forgetting to update for so long (I'm so, so sorry :( ), have a double-update! <3
> 
> Thanks for your continued patience and support, and a big thank you to my lovely beta reader, Zen! <3


	28. Chapter 28

Lucas frowned at his phone as the coordinates came in. Something was going on. First the tail, and now the abrupt change of plans? And, while Lucas had expected Harry to not exactly be the most forthcoming, he had expected something a bit… _more_ than “can’t say anything.” _Something_ to give him an idea of what he could expect. _Anything_.

“What’s going on?” Ortiz asked, her voice wavering. It struck Lucas, then, just how young the girl was. _Christ_. She couldn’t have been older than he was when he had gone to Moscow eight years ago. _She’s just a kid_. And now he had to tell her that what should have been an ordinary, easy systems update was now something much more complicated. If he told her the truth, he’d probably terrify the shit out of her. If he didn’t tell her the truth… she’d figure out quickly enough that they weren’t headed towards Thames House. Even if she had never been to London, Lucas knew that the coordinates led to an abandoned construction site on the other side of the city, and she’d realize that they weren’t headed towards downtown.

“Change of plans,” Lucas said, turning the car abruptly down a side street.

“Let me call my people, please,” Ortiz said. She reached out and touched his bicep. “They need to know what’s going on. If something’s gone wrong, they need to know, it’s important.”

Lucas hesitated. He could appreciate her situation. There was nothing more terrifying than being in the cold with no way of contacting your people. But Lucas also knew that something was going down, something big. His gut was telling him that this whole mess stank and, if he wanted to keep the girl alive, then he had to play it cautiously. Until he knew the whole situation, he was loath to go against Harry’s orders.

“Listen, I don’t know what’s happened,” Lucas said quietly. For the first time since Ortiz had gotten into the car, Lucas decided to go with the truth, however frightening it might sound to her. “And, until I do know what’s happened, I’m only listening to my boss.”

He glanced over at her and felt a knife of guilt twist in his gut. The girl looked scared. Tears were welling in her eyes and her lower lip wobbled. _She’s not cut out for this life_ , he thought sadly. All she did was hack the Pentagon and now she was thrust into a world of spies and dangerous people with dangerous agendas.

“Look,” Ortiz said, her voice wavering again. “I don’t know you. You lost my security, you’re not telling me what’s going on, and now we’re not even going to MI-5. If you want me to trust you, let me make a call.” Lucas didn’t answer. “Please? Robert?”

The knife twisted even more. She was scared and he was indirectly responsible for that. He remembered that day in Moscow, all those years ago, and he thought that the girl might feel the way he had felt when he was caught. There were no words to describe just how  _terrifying_ it had been, thinking he was going to be killed only to have something far worse happen. He drummed his fingers against the steering wheel as he thought.  _Surely_ whatever was going on didn’t make the whole CIA dirty? Lucas didn't necessarily trust the cousins… but surely Ortiz had a handler or someone that she could call and that could be trusted. In any case, all the CIA had been guilty of was having their car being made. If there was something going on, some sort of bigger plot that he didn't know about, Harry would have told him.  _Wouldn't he? It wouldn't be the first time he's kept things from me_ , Lucas thought darkly.

Finally, Lucas looked over at Ortiz once more before pulling into a carpark. “Let me make a call,” he said. “I’ll see what I can do. Stay here.”

Ortiz nodded, clutching the briefcase close to her chest, as Lucas got out of the car. Rubbing his mouth, Lucas looked around, making sure no one else was around, and then pulled out his phone and called Harry.

-x-

Ringing filled the Grid once more. Ros and Harry glanced at each other before hurrying to crowd around where Malcolm and Connie were sitting. Ben and Jo continued to work on their little plan in the computer terminal room, away from any prying eyes and ears. _Their plan had better work_. They had been correct, Ros hadn’t liked their plan. But, as no one else had a better idea, she had settled for telling them to be careful and to do whatever they needed to do to make it work. She just hoped that it wouldn't get them all killed in the process.

“It’s Lucas,” Malcolm said, glancing up at Ros and Harry.

There was a click as the hackers picked up. “Harry?” Lucas asked.

“Alpha One,” Harry’s voice said. It was disconcerting, Ros decided, hearing Harry’s voice in front of her when he was right beside her.

“The package wants to clear the rendezvous with her superiors. Is that okay?” Lucas said. Ros could have slapped herself in the forehead. _Just let her call them, damn it. Let them tell you that this whole mess stinks and that you shouldn’t go to the rendezvous_. Ros supposed this is what she got for being petty with Lucas. Now the hackers would tell him that he couldn’t let the cryptographer ring the CIA, which meant that he would keep on walking blindly into their trap. _Damn it_.

“Hold on,” the hackers said.

“Why the delay?” Harry, the real Harry, asked after a few seconds of silence.

Malcolm glanced up, but it was Connie who answered. “They need to formulate new responses. Downside with voice synthesis," she said with a shrug.

Harry looked contemplative as the hackers said, “Alpha One, that is a negative. The package is under suspicion, maybe dangerous.”

“Dangerous?” Lucas echoed, almost incredulously. _He knows, he_ ** _has_** _to know_ , Ros thought. Never had she hoped so fervently that she was wrong about someone, but, _God_ , she desperately hoped that her previously assessment of Lucas, that he was damaged goods and shouldn’t be in the field, was wrong. If she wasn’t… that cryptographer was as good as dead. Ros was under no illusions that, once the FSB and the CSS had Cybershell, they’d kill the girl. _And Lucas_. Although, Ros was still on the fence whether that’d be a tragedy. Really, if they killed him, she thought she'd be more irritated that  _they_ got to kill him instead of her.

“Come on, Harry. I need details,” Lucas coaxed.

“If she resists, neutralize her and bring the codes to the rendezvous yourself.”

 _What?_ Ros thought, eyes widening. Harry looked at her in alarm. _Shit_. She knew it shouldn’t have come as a surprise. The hackers wanted the codes and, if they couldn’t have Ortiz, they’d take the codes from her corpse and pin it on MI-5. _And we’d be disgraced_. No one would be able to take MI-5 seriously again. At the very least, both hers and Harry's heads would roll. _At the worst, all of us would be fired_. Not to mention, the fallout with the cousins…. _Shit_. The United Kingdom wouldn’t survive the fallout if the FSB and the CSS succeeded in pinning Ortiz’s death on them, even more so than if they got their hands on Cybershell. They were already barely surviving America's wrath for some hacker hijacking their drones through a British portal. If they got Cybershell....

A more selfish thought wormed its way through her mind. She tried not to focus on it, but it was insidious and she found herself wondering just how long she could keep convincing everyone that there was no one better suited to the job than her if she kept making mistakes like these. One of the three devices had gone off and, while she had remained calm under pressure, the fact remained that MI-5 had faulty intelligence and would have been made a laughing stock if Ben hadn’t told them that the dry run was the real thing. Add to that the bomb at the restaurant… While the Home Secretary knew that the bomb had been fake, it was imperative that Londoners not realize that it was staged. Which meant that, if they lost the cryptographer too, she would never be able to convince anyone that she could do this job. She’d be disgraced, at best. Fired, and left out to dry at worst.

Ros chewed on her lip. She shouldn’t have given in to her foolish pettiness. _No_. She shouldn’t have given in to _Lucas_ ’ ploy. She had known what he was doing. Hell, if she wasn’t so competitive, she might have done something similar when she returned from Moscow. He was deliberately downplaying his skills; Ros _knew_ he had to be. There was no way he had been promoted over his more experienced colleagues at twenty-three if he was as remarkably _average_ as he pretended to be. There was no way he had earned the loyalty of not one, but _two_ Section Heads if he wasn’t as brilliant as Harry seemed to think he was. But she had been foolish to treat him as though he were a green recruit. She had known the importance of the cryptographer making it to MI-5 safely and had known that, while it was an easy operation, she should have gone instead of delegating it to Lucas out of pure spite. She had let her anger get the best of her, had forgotten that he was dangerous and that he was a lot better than he pretended, and now they were about to suffer the consequences of her damned foolishness. All because he was  _desperate_ to win Harry's approval. As long as the hackers continued to use Harry's voice, they'd have Lucas asking how high to jump.

Lucas had paused, as if processing Harry’s orders. “Sorry, confirm that?” His voice sounded confused, but Ros felt certain there was a faint tone of anger to it. She frowned. _Something Harry’s blind spot isn’t comfortable with, perhaps?_

“If she resists, neutralize her and bring the codes to the rendezvous yourself. Bayonet protocol. Theta five.”

Ros looked over at Harry. His face was unreadable, but she imagined he felt the same as she did, hearing the order. _Now would be an excellent time for your pet officer to show off what made him so special you were willing to hide whatever he did when he was younger_ , Ros thought. If he killed the cryptographer…. If MI-5 was responsible for the Americans’ prized Danielle Ortiz’s death, there were would be no reconciliation. It’d be war between their intelligence agencies and frosty relations between the United Kingdom and America.

“Harry?” Lucas asked, his voice just as incredulous as it had been a moment before. “That’s a kill order. On an unarmed civilian.”

“The codes must be at the rendezvous at all costs.”

“I’m not going to execute this girl.” _Yes_ , Ros thought in elation. She never thought she’d be happier to hear that an officer had a weak stomach for killing.

“Bayonet protocol. Theta five.”

“No, sorry, I need full clearance and authorization codes, and I’m only doing this as an _absolute_ last resort and if you don’t like that, you can decommission me. Is that clear?” Lucas said quickly. Ros was impressed. Never had she heard such heat in his voice. _There’s_ the steel that she knew had to exist if he had survived eight years in prison. And the fact that he was willing to be decommissioned… _They’re pushing him too hard_.

“Yes. Sending now.”

Ros watched in horror as Harry’s codes appeared on the screen. “They know all my authorization codes,” Harry said. He rubbed his forehead.

“Lucas won’t do it, _surely_ ,” Connie said, looking between Ros and Harry.

“He might,” Ros said, biting her lower lip as she resumed tapping her pen against her palm. “He got the order from Harry himself.” _And he’s desperate to prove himself to Harry._ If he thought that offing Ortiz would win him some favour with Harry, then he might just kill the girl.

“I’ll call back when I get to the rendezvous,” Lucas said coldly. Gone was the anger in his voice. It was… almost chilling how remarkably neutral his voice sounded.

Ros closed her eyes as she heard the click of Lucas hanging up. Lucas may still be going to the rendezvous, but at least he had made it clear he wasn’t going to blindly follow orders and kill the girl. _Thank God for small mercies_. Now, if only Ben and Jo could hurry up with their Italian landmine, maybe they could all get out  _before_ Lucas did something monumentally stupid.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As always, sorry I am a potato who forgot to update (work has been nuts this past month! :( ), big thank you to my lovely beta reader, Zen, to my lovely readers, and to the lovely people commenting and leaving kudos!


	29. Chapter 29

To say Lucas was stunned would be an understatement. A kill order on Ortiz? Was Harry _mental_? What the _fuck_? While it was impressive that she had hacked the Pentagon, he was pretty certain that didn’t warrant _killing_ her. Not to mention, if he _did_ kill her, _surely_ there’d be repercussions with the Americans? And why wasn’t Harry more concerned about the tail? Lucas would have at _least_ expected Malcolm or Connie to have looked into who might have sent the tail. _Surely_ Harry would have mentioned something if he had them looking into it? Shouldn’t one of them or, hell, _both_ of them, found something by now on who was following the cousins?

He couldn’t quite figure out why, but his instincts were telling him there was something more going on, something he wasn’t privy to. Lucas tapped his phone against his palm a few times in thought as he turned back towards the car. Ortiz was watching him nervously, no doubt waiting for him to tell her if she could call her people or not. _And I have to tell her she can’t, all the while trying to figure out what the bloody hell is going on_.  _No time like the present to be the bearer of bad news_. Lucas pocketed his phone and got back into the car. Leaning back against his seat, he took a moment before saying, “I’m sorry, I can’t let you call in.”

“That sucks,” Ortiz said. Before Lucas could say anything, she had the door open and was hurrying away from the car. _Damn it_. She stopped a few paces away.

“Calm down,” Lucas said as he got out of the car at a slower pace. He held his hands up placatingly as he circled around the car so that it was no longer between them.

“Wait, something’s wrong here,” Ortiz said, holding a hand up. Lucas stopped his advance. If he spooked her, she’d run, and that’d just be another headache and a half. He was still reeling from Harry giving the kill order, he’d _really_ rather not have to chase down the girl and ward off any would-be good Samaritans. “And I’m not going anywhere until I check in.”

Lucas shook his head. “You’re mistaken.”

“You’re mistaken?” Ortiz echoed mockingly. “Oooh, _scary_.” Lucas sighed and looked away. _Should have seen that one coming._ “What are you gonna do? Kill me?”

He snapped his attention back to her. She couldn’t have overheard, could she? He had made sure that he hadn’t been facing the car for this _exact_ reason. He had a feeling Harry wouldn’t allow her to make the call, but he didn’t want her to know that _before_ he got back into the car. There was no way that she could know that he had been given a kill order.

Either Lucas was slipping and he was more unsettled about the kill order than he had initially thought, or the girl was smarter than he had given her credit. She must have seen something in his face because, in a moment, her face transformed from mocking to blind terror. She spun around and started running, screaming for help as she tried to put distance between her and Lucas.

 _Shit_. Lucas snarled a slightly more vulgar word as he gave chase. _Looks like all that late night running was good for something after all_. The chase didn’t last excessively long. Lucas was more in shape, had longer legs that could cover more ground, and he wasn’t running in cowboy boots. Ortiz screamed when he wrapped an arm around her middle, so he covered her mouth with his hand as he hoisted her into the air. She bit at his hand, causing him to snarl again, but he didn’t relinquish his grip as he dragged her, literally, kicking and screaming to the car. _There’s no way she’s going to get into the car with me_. It was a sobering thought. He didn’t have anything with him to make sure she stayed put and didn’t try to throw herself out into traffic or something equally ridiculous. Which left him with one option.

He wasn’t entirely sure how he managed it, but he got the boot open without relinquishing his hold on Ortiz. She screamed again, incoherently at first, before switching to some rather inventive curses that he was fairly certain would cause some… past roommates to blush. When she saw him open the boot, her struggles intensified, but Lucas was stronger and, now that the boot was open, was able to use both hands to manhandle her into it.

“Sorry,” he said as he pushed her into the boot and slammed the lid down. Not ideal, but better than nothing. He braced his hands against the boot as he listened to Ortiz scream and pound at the metal. Lucas was pretty certain he could make out a few choice words that he elected to ignore. She was scared, but he could hardly blame her. He’d spent his fair share of time in the boot of a car and, in his experience, there weren’t too many things worse. No one went into the boot of a car for good reasons. _And I just shoved her in there after getting a goddamn kill order._

Lucas pressed his hand against his mouth as he thought. Something wasn’t right. It wasn’t like Harry to take so long to answer the phone, and it certainly wasn’t like Harry to give a kill order on an unarmed civilian. He’d seen it done in the past, certainly, but those had been extreme situations. This, though? This was _wrong_. Ortiz might be a pain in the arse and she was certainly dangerous if she could hack even the _Pentagon_ , but he wasn’t so sure that meant she had to be _neutralized_. And what was all this about Cybershell being compromised? _How_ could it be compromised? It was supposed to be cutting edge technology, yet he was just supposed to believe that it was _compromised_? Just like that?

Frowning, Lucas got back into the car and rested his palms against the wheel. He couldn’t shake the feeling that something was _wrong_. After a moment to collect himself, he put the Bluetooth back on and called Ros. As with Harry, it took Ros several rings to pick up. “Come on, pick up,” he muttered. She put him on this ridiculous operation. The least she could do was interrupt her meeting or whatever it was that had her and Harry tied up to answer her goddamn phone.

“Alpha One,” Ros said, finally picking up. Her voice was calm, cold almost, but he supposed that was to be expected. He had read her file. A kill order was hardly the worst order she’d received. A dark thought wormed its way into his mind and he found himself wondering if she would even question the order, or if she would have just taken the shot.

“Ros, what the hell is going on?”

“You heard Harry’s orders,” she said flatly.

“Yeah, I did, and they’re a goddamn kill order,” Lucas hissed, unable to keep the anger out of his voice. “Ortiz is an unarmed civilian and you want me to kill her?”

“If she resists, neutralize her,” Ros said simply.

“That’s it, then? Neutralize her?” Lucas repeated incredulously. “What about the tail? Ros, what the fuck is going on?”

There was a pause. “Can’t say anything more now. If she resists, neutralize her. Out.” There was a sense of finality as she hung up.

“ _Fuck_ ,” Lucas snarled as he hit the steering wheel. His conversation with Ros hadn’t eased any of the growing discomfort he had over this whole operation. There was definitely something off, something he couldn’t put his finger on. _What the fuck is going on?_

Lucas didn’t start the car. Instead, he stared at the empty parking garage. His instincts were screaming and he couldn’t figure out _why_. _Think, Lucas, think_. He hadn’t exactly expected Ros to be all sunshine and cuddles, especially after he had broken into her house last night, but he also hadn’t expected her to be so cold when repeating Harry’s orders.

_That’s it!_

His eyes widened. The _wording_. It was the _wording_ that was making him certain there was something more going on. Ros had used the _exact_ same words Harry had when repeating his orders. Even when he pushed to get details, she had used the _exact_ same words, the _exact_ same excuses as Harry. “Shit,” he growled and hit his hands against the steering wheel again.

_Okay, now I know why this whole mess stinks. But what’s causing the stink?_

Lucas pressed a hand to his mouth. The whole Cybershell mess had started with hackers using a British portal to access an American drone. What if… Surely it wasn’t possible? _But what if they hacked **us**?_ It didn’t happen often – Lucas had never seen MI-5 be hacked during his tenure before prison, but Malcolm had mentioned in passing that MI-5 was hacked once sometime after Lucas was caught. But… what if… _How are they getting Harry’s and Ros’ voices, though?_ Neither of them would voluntarily give those commands. Unless they were being threatened? No, even then, they would have found a way to warn him about any threats on the Grid. Code, maybe? But neither of them had used any code Lucas had heard of and, even if it _was_ code, it didn’t explain the fact they had each separately used the exact same wording.

Ortiz was still screaming in the boot and Lucas groaned. She had hacked the Pentagon. She might have a better idea of what was going on than Lucas did. _Great. First I slip up and she thinks I’m about to bloody well kill her, next I shove her in the boot, and now I have to convince her to help me figure out what the fuck is going on. Right. No problem._

Steeling himself, Lucas slipped out of the car again. He hesitated only for a moment before opening the boot of the car. “You fucking bastard! The only way you’ll get these codes is over my dead body! Wait until my people hear about this! I’m going to tell them all about how you lost my security and then tried to kill me!” Ortiz screamed, shaking her head in her hysteria.

Lucas pinched the bridge of his nose. “Yeah, about that,” he said. “If you’d kindly stop screaming at me for two seconds, I can explain.”

“Oh, now you want to explain?” Ortiz hissed. She swung the briefcase handcuffed to her wrist at him and Lucas was forced to retreat a step to avoid getting hit. Ortiz sprang out of the boot and bolted again, screaming once more.

 _Not again_. Lucas growled a curse under his breath and chased after her. Wrapping an arm around her waist and a hand around her mouth to muffle her screams, Lucas jerked her hard against him. “Look, I’m trying to save your goddamn life. If you’d stop running and screaming, that’d be really convenient,” he hissed into her ear. Ortiz paused and Lucas took that as a good sign. “I’m going to take my hand off your mouth because I’d like to speak _with_ you, not _at_ you. Nod if you understand.”

Ortiz nodded, so Lucas tentatively moved his hand off her mouth. He didn’t relinquish his hold around her waist, just in case she got it in her head to run off again. Lucas was getting _really_ tired of having to chase her down and, when he wasn’t sure what was going on, having to chase her down wasted precious time.

“Gonna kill me, Robert?” Ortiz asked, her voice wobbling.

“No,” Lucas said.

“I don’t trust you.”

Lucas didn’t blame her for not trusting him. Hell, _he_ wouldn’t trust him in this situation. But he had to win her over somehow, had to get her to at least hear him out, so Lucas let her go and took a step back. He lifted his hands placatingly, showing that they were empty as he did so. She took two steps away from him and turned to look at him nervously, eyeing the gun holster that his jacket was only partially hiding. Seeing his empty hands probably didn’t reassure her much when he knew she could see his gun, but he wasn’t about to disarm himself just to make her feel better. That was just plain stupid and, while he had certainly made some poor calls in the past, he wasn’t about to drop his gun where she could get at it, certainly not when she had no reason to trust him and every reason to use said weapon on _him_. _There has to be another way to get her to trust me._ He _really_ needed her to trust him if he wanted to get her input on what might be going on with the Grid.

“I don’t blame you,” Lucas said finally. He had built a reputation on being able to talk himself out of difficult situations. _Might as well put it to the test._ “But I give you my word, I’m not going to kill you. Something has gone wrong with this operation and I’m trying to figure it out, but I need your help.”

“Will you let me call my people and tell them where we are?” Ortiz demanded. “Because, if not, forget it, you might as well just kill me now because I’m not getting in that car with you again.”

Lucas nodded once. “I will, but not yet. I think the operation is compromised.”

“What?” Ortiz frowned. Her hands tightened on the briefcase as she drew it closer to her body.

He folded his arms across his chest. “When we were on the cleaning route, I saw a tail following your security detail. That’s why I lost them.”

“Yeah, so you said.”

“I wasn’t sure if they had tagged us as well, so I thought it was better to be safe and I lost both the tail and your security detail. And, because I don’t know how they knew about the cleaning route, I decided it was best to minimize contact with anyone I didn’t trust.”

“You think the CIA sent the tail?” Ortiz asked sceptically.

“I don’t know,” Lucas admitted. And he didn’t. But he had to know how deep this went. “You said you hacked the Pentagon, right?”

“Yeah,” Ortiz said, narrowing her eyes.

“Is it possible that someone could hack the Security Services’ servers?” Lucas asked quietly.

Ortiz rolled her eyes. “Duh. A good enough hacker can get through any firewall. Why? Is that why you locked me in the trunk? Afraid I’d go and hack MI-whatever you guys are while you were taking a leak?”

Lucas rubbed his hand against his mouth again. _Fuck_. He had a bad feeling about this. “How hard is it to make it sound like someone’s talking to someone else without actually having the person say anything?”

“You mean, like, voice synthesis?” Ortiz asked. “Robert, what’s going on?”

Lucas pulled out his phone and, after a moment, offered to her. “Call your people. Tell them that the cleaning route was compromised and that your Security Services escort has received a new rendezvous location. Ask them to confirm it and tell me _exactly_ what they say.”

“What, you’re not going to tell me to put it on speaker?” Ortiz asked, eyeing the phone.

“No,” he said. “I’m asking you to trust me on this. Least I can do is give you a bit of trust.”

Ortiz nodded after a moment. “Suppose I believe you. Suppose I think you might be right about this whole mission is compromised thing. Then what?”

“Then we figure out what the hell is going on and keep you safe,” Lucas said. Ortiz met his eyes and took the phone.

-x-

There had been no word from Lucas since receiving the kill order. Ben had since come to the Grid and requested Malcolm’s assistance with their little escape plan. Harry and Connie were hovering around Malcolm’s desk. With nothing for her to do but sit and be left with her anger, Ros decided that fair was fair. If Lucas wanted to start a juvenile prank war, she _would_ win. Within ten minutes, she achieved revenge on Lucas for messing with her desk by reorganizing his own desk. When she wasn’t satisfied with the way she had reorganized it, she had moved things around again. And, while it had entertained her for a few minutes to enjoy the warm glow of revenge served, it had only entertained her for a short while. With nothing left to do, Ros paced.

This entire operation was a mess. It should have been straightforward. Even if she didn’t like the idea of the cousins coming in and updating MI-5’s systems with their own, there wasn’t supposed to be anything complicated in sending Lucas to retrieve the cryptographer. With the dry run-turned real run, at least Ros could say that no one expected it and that she had held up admirably. Certainly, the Al-Qaeda had gotten one past them and had gotten a bomb off, but no civilians ha died in the blast. They had been able to use their systems to communicate with C019 and stop the bombs. And, then, the mess with the Al-Qaeda attempting to detonate another device… While they had stopped the actual bomb from going off, the fact that the public thought the bomb went off meant that Ros was already swimming in perilous waters. She knew better than anyone here the power of the public’s opinion. If she wanted to keep her job, she _needed_ this operation to succeed.

The fact that she couldn’t predict if Lucas would kill Ortiz or not worried her. She didn’t want to think Lucas would kill the cryptographer. She had been in his flat. She had searched the bloody place while he had been doing his groceries. She had seen the bible in the bedside drawer. She rather doubted Lucas had a stomach for killing. But he had survived eight years in prison. She maintained her belief that he was damaged goods. _How far would he go to regain Harry’s trust?_ If the order had come from her, she would have expected that he would ignore the order or at least fight the order. But coming from Harry? Harry could tell Lucas to drop everything and go back to Moscow and Lucas _would_ , simply because it was _Harry_ asking him. The fact that “Harry” had given him the kill order… Ros wasn’t sure Ortiz would survive the hour.

With nothing to do but pace and berate herself, Ros stormed into the hall where Malcolm and Jo were huddled over the explosive device from the restaurant. It had been zapped, but Malcolm had said that he might be able to get it working again. Ros didn’t exactly like the idea of detonating a bomb inside Section D, but she couldn’t think of another way out either and they desperately needed to contact Lucas before he killed the cryptographer.

Ben was missing from the group. “Where’s Ben?” she demanded, her voice tight with frustration.

“Getting some wires,” Jo said before Malcolm could answer.

“Good,” Ros said, nodding shortly. “Where are we at with our escape plan?”

“Nearly there. I think I just need to do a few more things and it should be good to go. Maybe,” Malcolm said.

Before Ros could ask what Malcolm needed to finish doing and how much longer it would take, Connie called, “Lucas is calling again.” Ros looked up and hurried back to the Grid. Joining Harry and Connie at Malcolm’s desk, Ros stared hard at the screen. At the fourth ring, the hackers picked up.

“Harry,” Lucas’ voice carried through the Grid. It sounded… remarkably calm. Ros would have thought he would have been distressed over killing the cryptographer, especially with the way he had all but told Harry that he would rather be decommissioned than kill an unarmed civilian. _Maybe he grew a spine in the past half hour_.

“Alpha One,” the hackers, using Harry’s voice, said.

“I’m almost at the rendezvous. I’m about to carry out your orders when I get there.” Ros wasn’t sure how she felt at that. On the one hand, she was pleased that the girl wasn’t dead yet. On the other hand, Lucas sounded entirely… too calm, especially compared to the anger in his voice when he had spoken to the hackers last. “Just need to check something first, though,” he was saying, still in that calm voice.

“Go ahead.”

There was a pause. “What’s your favourite opera?”

 _What?_ Ros thought in confusion. And then it dawned on her. “He knows,” she whispered and felt a surge of triumph. Ros glanced at Harry, who was smiling. _This is the spy Harry vouched for,_ she thought. She didn’t know how Lucas had figured it out, but she was relieved all the same. The girl was still alive. Lucas knew something was wrong. Now, all they had to do was get out of the Grid and rain hell on the hackers.

“You have your orders, Alpha One,” Harry’s voice said. “Bayonet protocol. Theta five.”

“Your favourite opera?” Lucas insisted. “Harry?”

“Neutralize Ortiz. Now.”

“Wrong answer.”

There was a decisive click and Ros smiled. _I guess I have my answer about how skilled he is_. Now, if they could just get out of the Grid and find the hackers….

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am so, so sorry for the delay. Work has been chaotic, then I caught a nasty cold last week, and said cold has now developed into a sinus infection, so my head's kinda sorta in a fog. This chapter was beta'd by the lovely Zen (thank you <3), but I also just went over it and tweaked a few things, which probably isn't my _greatest_ idea when my head is in a fog, but we're gonna roll with it. :) So if there's any additional mistakes, they're all mine and I'm really sorry lol.


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